RTG Contradiction Studies

Memory Politics as Reparations? Sharing Perspectives from Namibia and Germany

Laidlaw Peringanda (Chairman of the Namibian Genocide Association), Fatou Sillah (Stadtteilinitiative Walle Entkolonialisieren) & Lilli Hasche (RTG Contradiction Studies)

11/18/2024 6:30 pm –8:30 pm

Hafenmuseum Bremen

Memory Politics are often juxtaposed with material forms of reparation. With the intention of countering this simplification, we have invited Laidlaw Peringanda to give a lecture followed by a talk with a member of the neighborhood initiative “Stadtteilinitiative Walle Entkolonialisieren”. Laidlaw Peringanda is an Ovaherero activist, artist, chairman of the Namibian Genocide Association and founder of the Swakopmund Genocide Museum. Following on from Peringanda’s  work on memory politics and the activities of the Decolonize Walle neighbourhood initiative, we are bringing together the discussion on memory politics with the debate on reparations. In particular, the aim is to relate the experiences of Bremen and Swakopmund to each other. Due to their geographical location, both cities have a strong connection to colonial seafaring. For example, Adolf Lüderitz, who made a significant contribution to German colonialism with his “Meilenschwindel”, came from Bremen and the shipowner and colonialist Adolph Woermann from neighboring Hamburg, and Swakopmund is still the prime example of German settler colonialism today. In Swakopmund, as in Bremen, critical perspectives on this colonial legacy are still marginalized. The historical contextualization of public places in the city is either missing or is interpreted one-sidedly. Demands for material reparations are also not yet sufficiently acknowledged in Germany. But the protest against this hegemonic memory is growing louder.  We want to discuss which steps are necessary to think together different aspects of decolonization.

Talk by Laidlaw Peringanda Celebration and Denial: Selective Memory Cultures in Swakopmund

Conversation with Fatou Sillah

The event will be held in German and English.

More informationen from Lilli Hasche (RTG Contradiction Studies)

Co-organizers: Stadtteilinitiative Walle Entkolonialisieren & Hafenmuseum Bremen

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ideal of a contradiction-free world

“Science has long been animated by the ideal of a contradiction-free world in which logical orders could merge with society, politics, culture and language. In the GRC Contradiction Studies we are working on ways of describing the multiplicity and complexity, the danger and beauty of our worlds that clearly go beyond concepts of freedom from contradiction.”

Michi Knecht
l’illusion d’une unité

“Foucault speaks of contradiction as l’illusion d’une unité.”

Ingo H. Warnke
driver

“Contradictions are an important driver of scientific practice and knowledge.”

Norman Sieroka
space

“According to Niklas Luhmann, space is a ‘special facility to negate contradictions’”.

Julia Lossau
Afterlife of colonialism

“Contradiction comes in many different forms. None is so debilitating than when the coloniser transitions, textually not politically, to decoloniality without taking the responsibility for the afterlife of colonialism, which they continue to benefit from. Self-examination and self-interrogation of the relations of coloniality, a necessity, seem nearly impossible for the coloniser who continues to act as beneficiary, masked in the new-found language of White fragility, devoid of an ethical responsibility of the very system of White domination they claim to be against.” (Black Consciousness and the Politics of the Flesh)

Rozena Maart