Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 From Colonial Fantasies to Postcolonial Memory: Historical and Theoretical Parameters
- 2 Remembering German Colonialism
- 3 Rewriting Colonialism in Cross-Cultural and Transcultural Perspective
- 4 Remapping the History of European Colonialism
- 5 From the Past to the Present and Back: Colonial History and Family History
- 6 Conclusion: German (Post)colonial Memory in Perspective
- Bibliography
- Index of Authors and Works Discussed
- General Index
6 - Conclusion: German (Post)colonial Memory in Perspective
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 From Colonial Fantasies to Postcolonial Memory: Historical and Theoretical Parameters
- 2 Remembering German Colonialism
- 3 Rewriting Colonialism in Cross-Cultural and Transcultural Perspective
- 4 Remapping the History of European Colonialism
- 5 From the Past to the Present and Back: Colonial History and Family History
- 6 Conclusion: German (Post)colonial Memory in Perspective
- Bibliography
- Index of Authors and Works Discussed
- General Index
Summary
Contemporary German literature since the 1990s has contributed significantly to promoting and shaping the rediscovery of Germany's colonial history and the memory of German, Austrian, and Swiss involvement in the wider history of Europe's colonial expansion. There is a sizable body of historical novels and family novels which engage with colonialism in Africa, with the roots and repercussions of overseas colonialism inside Germany, and with the legacies of colonial history and thought both in contemporary Africa and in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Contemporary German historical novels about Africa represent, stage, and reflect the lived experience of both Europeans and Africans in the globalizing world of the colonial age as well as rereading, and in parts rewriting, the political and cultural history of German and European colonialism and imperialism from postcolonial, intercultural, and transcultural perspectives; they explore and critique the history and legacy of colonial discourse and challenge colonial narratives and myths, critically reintegrating colonialism and imperialism in German (and Swiss and Austrian) historical awareness. The themes covered in these novels include the full range of phases and aspects of German and European colonialism: they range from the second age of exploration, the work of the Christian missionaries, and the politics of colonial trade to the late-nineteenth-century “scramble for Africa”: the establishment of imperial Germany's colonies; anticolonial resistance and genocidal colonial war; colonial settlement and colonialism as a career; the colonies as a space of European modernization and emancipation; the impact of colonial rule and commerce on traditional African cultures and societies; and the relationships between the colonizers and the colonized; cross-cultural experience, cultural transfer, and cultural hybridization in colonial space.
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- Information
- Remembering AfricaThe Rediscovery of Colonialism in Contemporary German Literature, pp. 409 - 426Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2013