Beyond "colonial amnesia" - Decolonising German institutional memory through transformative social activism

在目前的形式下，德国占主导地位的文化记忆表现出对德国殖民主义的无知态度。在推动德国历史的重大历史版本以及将来自前殖民民族的当地社区边缘化的过程中，机构越来越受到活动人士的密切关注，他们要求真正与过去重新接触。我的博士学位将通过探索非制度化记忆激进主义的变革潜力来推动这场辩论，以鼓励主流记忆文化的去殖民化。这将涉及到承认殖民时代是现代性的组成部分，重新评估权威性的知识和表现，以及对排除非白人视角并统治当代记忆文化的白人的规范性进行批判性的自我反思。通过在柏林后殖民主义和政治美中心等应对这些挑战的主要活动家运动中进行广泛的定性研究，包括访谈、参与者观察和研究具体的运动以及对他们自己的出版物的分析，我的研究将使人们深入了解他们的方法，并全面洞察变革性激进主义的可能性和可能性。这将对持续的规范性记忆进行关键的解构，并展示非殖民主义记忆的必要性和价值，弥合激进主义和主流制度之间的鸿沟。德国对其殖民经验的参与或缺乏，构成了我七年来工作的核心。它最初引起了我的注意，当时我在莱比锡攻读学士学位，在那里我讨论了后殖民理论作为一种思维方式(姆本贝2008)，作为我的本科论文(获得一等分)，并与激进组织莱比锡后科洛尼亚大学合作。从2017年在伯明翰开始我的硕士学位，我扩展了我的知识基础，并在我的论文中巩固了到目前为止的工作(取得了优异的成绩)。在这部作品中，我对柏林的Strassen倡议进行了分析。Strassen倡议是一个激进组织，旨在改变纪念德国殖民暴力肇事者的街道名称，作为一个未被认可的激进主义挑战德国规范记忆的案例研究。在伯明翰，我通过其他活动进一步确保了我作为研究人员的独特技能，例如在牛津大学非洲研究日(2018年3月)上展示我的工作，通过巴塞罗那的非殖民化知识和权力暑期学校(2018年7月)展示我对非殖民化力量的知识，以及通过协调在印度海得拉巴举行的全球南方认识论研讨会(2018年12月)发展我的研究组织技能，来自四大洲的50人参加了研讨会。

In its current form, Germany's dominant cultural memory manifests an attitude of ignorance towards German colonialism. Promoting a gravely historic version of Germany's past and the marginalisation of local communities descending from formerly colonised peoples, institutions are increasingly scrutinisedby activists demanding genuine re-engagement with the past.My PhD will advance this debate by exploring the transformative potential of non-institutionalised memory activism to encourage the decolonisation of mainstream memory culture. This will involve an acknowledgment of the colonial period as a constituent of modernity, a re-assessment of authoritativeknowledge and representation, and a critical self-reflection on the normativity of whiteness that excludes non-white perspectives and governs contemporary memory culture. By conducting extensive qualitative research among key activist movements engaging with these challenges, such as Berlin Postcolonial andthe Centre for Political Beauty, including interviews, participant observation and study of specific campaigns and analyses of their own publications, my research will generate an in-depth understanding of their approaches as well as a comprehensive insight into the possibilities of and for transformative activism. This will inform a critical deconstruction of persisting normative memories and demonstrate the necessity and value of decolonising memory, bridging the gap between activism and mainstream institutions.Germany's engagement with its colonial experience, or the lack thereof, has constituted the core of my work for seven years. It initially drew my attention during my BA at Leipzig where I discussed postcolonial theory as a way of thinking (Mbembe 2008) for my undergraduate dissertation (achieving a first classmark) and worked with the activist group Leipzig Postkolonial. Commencing my MA at Birmingham in 2017 I extended my knowledge base and consolidated my work thus far in my dissertation (achieving a Distinction). In this work, I conducted an analysis of the Strassen initiative in Berlin, an activist group seeking to change street names that commemorate German perpetrators of colonial violence, as a case study of underrecognised activism challenging normative memories in Germany. At Birmingham I further secured my unique skill set as a researcher through additional engagements, such as presenting mywork at the Researching Africa Day at Oxford (March 2018), demonstrating my knowledge on the power of decolonisation through the Decolonizing Knowledge and Power summer school in Barcelona (July 2018) and developing my research organisation skills through coordinating the Global Southern EpistemologiesWorkshop in Hyderabad/India (December 2018), attended by 50 participants from four continents.