Preliminary Programme

Blending comparative and transnational approaches, my paper zooms on the intersections of whiteness, intimacies, and genocidal violence in settler colonial projects in the American Southwest (Arizona and New Mexico) and in German Southwest Africa (today’s Namibia). It discusses how extreme violence against the Apaches and the Hereros, respectively, was closely linked with notions of “civilization” and “respectability” that the settlers constructed in their everyday intimate sphere (living arrangements, sexuality, cultural manners, free time) and used to camouflage and justify violence, legitimizing the taking of lands and destruction of peoples and cultures. These settler “regimes of respectability” also proved transnational and global in character: they constituted of similar traits and rituals, linked power between the intimate and the public, and were built and maintained via transnational transfers, influences, and networks. (Show less)

The manner in which the so-called West perceives the African Other tends to (still) be based on images designed during the time of high imperialism. This paper will portray how the creation of the colonial photography genre at the end of the nineteenth century was tightly linked to the idea of a white identity within a non-white context. The aim is to show the long-lasting impact of European-African colonial photographs on the development, upkeep, and validation within former colonial societies on both white and non-white perspectives. Thereby linking contemporary ideas on identity to formerly racist and racial visual heritages. (Show less)

Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this paper investigates how narratives of German scientific exploration through Central Africa in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century conveyed concepts of European cultural identity and perceived cultural superiority. It will show that at this time of heightened political tension during the ‘scramble for Africa’, it was not only the narration of German-African encounters that reflected and informed notions of European self-understanding. The narration of inter-European rivalries in Africa during the search for scientific knowledge both reflected and influenced the evolving political situation in Europe at the time. This paper will show that these inter-European rivalries were therefore key to legitimizing cultural violence on African soil and in many ways foreshadowed later violence on European soil. (Show less)