Unmaking Colonial History
Report from a decolonial rally in BerlinOn 25 May 2020, George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis by white police officer Derek Chauvin, who pressed his knee into Mr Floyd’s neck for 8 minutes and 45 seconds. Worldwide protests erupted in the weeks following Floyd’s murder. Police violence and systems of racism became a global conversation. In response, nearly 200,000 people took to the streets in Germany. Angela Davis called these global protests the biggest rebellion since the 1960s.
Weeks later, protesters at a UK Black Lives Matter Demonstration threw the statue of the ...
read more "Tear This Down!"
read more "Tear This Down!"
Abstract
The protests sparked by the death of George Floyd have had an unexpected impact both on the media and on Italian public debate. Black Lives Matter (BLM) in particular has been watched very closely by various analysts as a movement deemed capable of providing new impetus for the discussion about identity, civil rights and immigration in Italy.
However, the Americanisation of the discourse about racism has crowded out any attempt to analyse Italy's repressed colonial memory, which continues to be the exclusive and limited focus of academic discussions, ...
read more "Stories of Men and Statues"
read more "Stories of Men and Statues"
Abstract
In this contribution, Françoise Vergès argues that as long as Europe resists considering the role and place of slavery in the making of Europe as an idea and a project, the understanding of why there is “continuous systemic racist violence and exploitation” and a “struggle over the writing of memory and history” will remain wanting. The marginalisation of some antiracist acts and the obliteration of subaltern voices are tied to the dominant European narrative on slavery and its abolition. We must turn to Aimé Césaire’s notion of...
read more "The White Saviour or Racism Without Race"
read more "The White Saviour or Racism Without Race"
A Catalyst in Postcolonial Memory?Abstract
The Black Lives Matter movement in Belgium focused particularly on statues of Leopold II and other key figures in Belgian colonial history. These had already been the target of protest since 2004, but it was not until June 2020 that any were removed. Coinciding with the 60th anniversary of Congolese independence, the summer marked a true watershed in Belgium’s dealing with its colonial past. The Belgian King expressed his deepest regret and the Belgian Parliament established a sort of truth and ...
read more "Black Lives Matter in Belgium (June-July 2020)"
read more "Black Lives Matter in Belgium (June-July 2020)"
Processes of Decolonisation in European MuseumsAbstract
Since the late 1980s, museums have been criticised for the role they played in legitimising colonialism and imperial expansion. Whereas museums were traditionally assumed to be objective institutions of knowledge production and dissemination, they have come under scrutiny and are currently in a process of reassessment, summed up by the term ‘decolonisation’. Although the intention and meaning of this term can vary according to the local and national context and understanding of the past, the underlying assumption ...
read more "Rethinking Museums"
read more "Rethinking Museums"