Decolonizing German and European History at the Museum

Description

Decolonizing German and European History at the Museum examines efforts by European museums to investigate colonialism as part of an unprocessed past, confront its presence, and urge repair. A flurry of exhibitions and the overhaul of numerous large museums in the last decade signal that an emergent colonial memory culture is now reaching broader publics. Exhibitions pose the question of what Europeans owe to those they colonized. Decolonizing German and European History at the Museum shows how museums can help visitors mourn historic violence and identify the contemporary agents, beneficiaries, victims, survivors, and resisters of colonial presence. At the same time, the book treats the museum as part of the racialized power relations that activists, academics, and artists have long protested against. This book asks whether museums have made the dream of activists, academics, and artists to build equitable futures more acceptable and more durable—or whether in packaging that dream for general audiences they curtail it. Confronting colonial violence, this book argues, pushes Europeans to face the histories of racism and urges them to envision antiracism at the global scale. Contents Acknowledgments List of Illustrations Contestations 1. Colonial History and Imperial Presence in the Museum: Historiography, Mourning, Sovereignty 2. Activist Interventions in European Ethnology Museums 3. Encasing Colonialism and Cosmopolitan Citizenship at the German History Museum German Colonialism: Fragments of Its Past and Present 4. Confronting a Violent Past, Choreographing Mourning 5. Decolonizing the Metropole: Antiracism and Civil Society 6. Imperial World Order, Elusive Sovereignty Postsovereignty 7. Postcolonial Europe at the House of European History 8. Artists in/against the Museum 9. Conclusion Notes Works Cited Index