Recollecting bones
- This article critically engages with the different politics of memory involved in debates over the restitution of Indigenous Australian ancestral remains stolen by colonial actors in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and brought to Berlin in the name of science. The debates crystallise how deeply divided German scientific discourses still are over the question of whether the historical and moral obligations of colonial injustice should be accepted or whether researchers should continue to profess scientific disinterest'. The debates also reveal an almost unanimous disavowal of Indigenous Australian knowledges and mnemonic conceptions across all camps. The bitter ironies of this disavowal become evident when Indigenous Australian quests for the remains of their ancestral dead lost in the limbo of German scientific collections are juxtaposed with white Australian (fictional) quests for the remains of Ludwig Leichhardt, lost in the Australian interior.
Author details: | Lars EcksteinORCiDGND |
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URN: | urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-413654 |
Title of parent work (English): | Postcolonial Studies |
Subtitle (English): | the remains of German-Australian colonial entanglements |
Publication series (Volume number): | Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Philosophische Reihe (147) |
Publication type: | Postprint |
Language: | English |
Date of first publication: | 2018/07/27 |
Publication year: | 2018 |
Publishing institution: | Universität Potsdam |
Release date: | 2018/07/27 |
Tag: | Ludwig Leichhardt ancestral remains; indigenous knowledge; memory; museums and anthropological collections; restorative justice |
Number of pages: | 15 |
Source: | Postcolonial Studies 21 (2018) Nr. 1, S. 6–19 DOI: 10.1080/13688790.2018.1435146 |
Organizational units: | Philosophische Fakultät |
Peer review: | Referiert |
Publishing method: | Open Access |
Grantor: | Taylor & Francis Open Access Agreement |
License (German): | CC-BY-NC-ND - Namensnennung, nicht kommerziell, keine Bearbeitungen 4.0 International |