Evils of a Global Past? Post-colonial Genocide Memory and Glocally Entangled Reconciliation Politics

This project builds on the obser­vation of multi-directional effects (Rothberg 2009), which globa­lized dis­courses and re­presen­tations of the holocaust have rendered for the re­inter­pretation of colonial mass violence. Michael Rothberg argues that (genocide) memory is marked by interaction and appro­priation across boundaries, in a “productive, inter­cultural dynamic”. The related debate surrounding memory com­petition vs. multi-directional memory phenomena has gained particular momentum within post-colonialism as a critical research strand. Post-colonial studies has drawn attention to global historical frames of large-scale violence committed in colonial contexts and triggered debates about possible ways of con­ceptualizing the con­temporary legacies of colonial intrusion, the deep trans­formations colonialism produced, and their long-term effects.

On the one hand, over the past decades, the complex histories of colo­nial violence and resulting power relation­ships have become the subject of multi-stranded research, aiming to come to grips with multi­directional cultural flows across the globe and their im­plications for local agency. On the other, a new poli­tical field of action has developed, involving trans­national initia­tives aimed at the re­cognition of historical victimhood, com­pensation, and recon­ciliatory politics in local arenas and in inter­national relations. This pheno­menon can be linked to a “cosmo­politan liberal empathy”, materialised in the “normative require­ment for states to repudiate past atrocities that are discordant with their twenty-first century liberal projected complexions”, as the British political scientist Tom Bentley notes: The once cherished global “discoveries” and colonial conquests by European powers have been effecti­vely re­interpreted as great evils that require political renounce­ment; and doing so may facilitate the con­struction of new relations, narratives, and projections – of the past, present, and possible de-colonized futures.

The emer­ging trans­formations in dealing with colonial legacies and memories of violence do not come without novel contra­dictions and multi­faceted tensions. In this vein, the project examines different cases of post­colonial memory politics, which intend to foster recon­ciliation between the descen­dants of historical per­petrators and of their victims. It studies the impact of such ‘de-colonizing’ activities on social iden­tities, mutual per­ceptions, and inter-group relations. We distinguish between (1) domestic recon­ciliation efforts, which typically mark settler colonial states, and (2) cross-border initiatives. The case studies explore on the different scales the em­ployed narratives, inter­pretation frames, roles, and activities of key actors, in order to identify similarities and differences in the struggle for decoloni­zation and to trace their multi-directional dynamics.