“Colonial amnesia” in Germany and “brava gente“ in Italy? – Transnational memory activism and Germany’s and Italy’s reckoning with the colonial past

• Applicant: Dr. Sahra Rausch
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research ; Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 539388324

In recent years, Europe’s colonial past has received increased attention as a result of repeated calls for recognition and reparations. Germany and Italy, however, are seen as “latecomers” in these debates: Not only does the literature emphasise the delay in their colonial expansionist efforts, but both countries also seem to be “belated” in terms of their current engagement with colonialism. In this context, grassroots initiatives, civil society movements, and engaged academics are often mentioned as the main catalysts for transforming how societies remember the past. The proposed project departs from the assumption that it is memory activism and its demands for recognition and reparation that are causing the former metropolises of colonial expansion to turn to their colonial pasts. By focusing on postcolonial memory activism in Germany and Italy, I examine current developments in memory politics in both countries, which have to be understood against the background of a general increase in the significance of the colonial past for former colonial societies. To this end, I am developing a transnational research design that relates Italian and German memory activism to each other. The project aims to identify the methods and strategies used by postcolonial memory activists to make the German and Italian colonial pasts relevant to the present. Secondly, the project examines the discursive conditions under which the demands of memory activists are either legitimised or delegitimised. Finally, the project will look at how (trans)national debates influence local activism and how local/national engagement transcends the boundaries of the nation-state. To this end, I will first reconstruct German and Italian parliamentary and governmental postcolonial memory politics in order to understand the given frameworks that structure memory activism at the national and local levels. In a second step, I will conduct individual interviews and focus group interviews with postcolonial memory activists in two selected locations in each country. By focusing on the circulation of knowledge and the borrowing of practices and ideas beyond the boundaries of the nation-state, the study develops a methodological framework that transcends the nation-state in the making of memory. The transnational comparative perspective thus not only makes a methodological contribution to the study of social movements, but also situates postcolonial memory activism in a broader European context.

• DFG Programme: WBP Position