Deutschland (post)kolonial? Visuelle Erinnerungskulturen und verwobene Geschichte(n) : Eine Einleitung

Abstract

Issue No 59 of FKW // Zeitschrift für Geschlechterforschung und visuelle Kultur explores the specific postcolonial condition in Germany, particularly as it appears in the field of visual culture. Departing from the relationship as it is (implicitly) articulated in recent debates and practices between German colonial history and Germany’s nationalsocialist past, it outlines a research gap in current discourse. From today’s perspective, the editors argue, German colonialism must necessarily be considered and discussed as a postnationalsocialist condition. The histories of National Socialism and Second World War are inevitably inscribed into the memory of German colonialism. The issue, therefore, focuses on the question of how colonial history and the history of nationalsocialism are interwoven in the visual cultures of memory of both the two German states, FRG and GDR, after 1945/1949 and in re-united Germany after 1990. This implies to consider how after the Second World War images of gender and/or gendered imageries were employed to (consciously or unconsciously) remember and not remember, to make visible and invisibilise German colonial history.