Canonization and literary historiography are changing in a world shaped by migration, globality and diversity, and they must do so if social self-descriptions and the cultural archive are to be inclusive. The aim of the Momentum project is therefore to investigate the knowledge of the world and diversity in 18th and 19th century literature and to explore its methods of representation and mediation, thereby demonstrating that German-language literature could be much more inclusive than current literary histories show.  
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Ziméo und Oroonoko are two fictional Black characters who appear in European letters throughout the eighteenth century in narratives, plays and poems. Of the over 60 translations and adaptations, roughly 30 can be found in the German-language literature of the time. The story of these two characters is one of Black resistance and revolt against the contemporary system of plantation slavery in the Caribbean. 
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To view law as a technology of culture means regarding law not so much as the state’s monopoly on the use of force or the implementation of a normative order, but rather as a technology and practice of regulation and formation. In this way, the focus is placed on the juridical practices that empower the (bourgeois) subject as well as the technologies and procedures that regulate them. From here the focus ultimately shifts to the cultural and medial ‘places’ along with the conditions for the implementation of these technologies as well as the aesthetic and symbolic processes which accompany and enable the implementation. 
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In Germany, Namibia and South Africa, contemporary societies are characterized by diversity, which is not only a challenge for shaping the present and the future, but also for understanding the past. An inclusive, diversity-oriented understanding challenges society's self-narrative and thus changes cultural memory. Literature and media, as well as everyday language use, have a part in cultural memory and produce cultures of memory. Accordingly, they are central both to the production and reflection of multidirectional memory work and to diversity-oriented future design.   
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