Another Africa? (Post-)Colonial Africa Imaginations in Russian, Polish, and German Culture

Over the course of the global hype of post-colonial literature ranging from authors like Chinua Achebe to Arundhati Roy, post-colonial theory has started its subsequent triumph procession around the world. With their own new questions and concepts, post-colonial approaches have revolutionized academic discussions in many fields, but particularly in cultural studies, philologies and social sciences. Currently they are markedly gaining in influence even in those cultural spheres where the new paradigm had initially been met with scepticism or even open rejection. Opponents pointed at their nations' specific role in modern colonialism or simply denied the transferability of (post-)colonial categories onto historical constellations which were different from those of ‚classical‘ Western European imperial powers. This conference addresses different realms of (post-)coloniality and their manifestations from a cross-cultural perspective with a focus on Russian, Polish and German imaginations of Africa.
In Germany, growing general interest in post-colonial topics in recent years has paradoxically triggered what can be referred to as the late ‚rediscovery‘ of Germany’s own national imperial history. At the centre of the German colonial imagination is Africa, resulting in a boom of new German Africa literature and film which includes theoretically aware and reflected works of art as well as more popular productions that rather continue colonial(ist) discourse patterns. Within the Russian cultural sphere, which under Czarism had its experiences with respect to colonial endeavours, the Soviet Union partially participated in schemes of hegemonic discourse in spite of its anti-imperialist ideological impetus with regard to Africa, a fact which became evident after the collapse of the Soviet Union and its dramatic rise of racism in post-Soviet Russia. On the other hand, both by way of cultural self-description and the perspective upheld by the West, Russia has always been conceptualized as a European Other: its discursive identifications therefore overlap non-occidental spaces, most notably Asia, but also Africa. Poland in turn oscillates in its cultural self-identification. While cultivating a self-image of having been dominated by an imperialist Russia (but also Prussian Germany), Poland nonetheless participates in Eurocentric and colonialist discourse patterns. We therefore assume historical entanglements within these three cultural spheres (and notably their distinctive national experiences with socialism) and the reflection of these experiences within the German, Russian and Polish discourses on Africa. It is also our assumption that those different but interrelated cultural and historical contexts modify the Anglo-American discursive paradigms of post-colonial theory. Hence, we focus on three cultural and academic contexts that have recently opened up to the post-colonial discourse and actively interact with the dominant anglophone paradigm. This conference wants to enhance and contribute to the post-colonial discussions in Central and Eastern European contexts by:

• Examining and comparing examples of the adoption and/or modification of the post-colonial paradigm in Russian, Polish and German culture/s and working out the respective discursive specificities;
• fostering comparative discussions of the (resulting) different Africa imaginations, with textual evidence of culture-specific semantics and functions;
• identifying the specifics of identity and alterity construction in a Central and Eastern European context;
• singling out/discerning the similarities and differences of a European-occidental discursive space: and
• encouraging interdisciplinary dialogue.

To enlarge the conference poster, please click here