Songea Mbano and the ‘halfway dead’ of the Majimaji War (1905–7) in memory and theatre
- Debates on the relevance of repatriation of indigenous human remains are water under the bridge today. Yet, a genuine will for dialogue to work through colonial violence is found lacking in the European public sphere. Looking at local remembrance of the Majimaji War (1905-07) in the south of Tanzania and a German-Tanzanian theatre production, this article demonstrates how the spectre of colonial headhunting stands at the heart of claims for repatriation and acknowledgement of this anti-colonial movement. The missing head of Ngoni leader Songea Mbano haunts the future of German-Tanzanian relations in culture and heritage. By staging the act of post-mortem dismemberment and foregrounding the perspective of descendants, the theatre production Maji Maji Flava offers an honest proposal for dealing with stories of sheer colonial violence in transnational memory.
Author details: | Yann LeGall |
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DOI: | https://doi.org/10.7227/HRV.6.2.2 |
Title of parent work (English): | Human Remains and Violence: an interdisciplinary journal |
Publisher: | University Press |
Place of publishing: | Manchester |
Publication type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Year of first publication: | 2020 |
Publication year: | 2020 |
Release date: | 2021/01/27 |
Tag: | Deutsch Ostafrika; Erinnerungskultur; Kolonialismus; Theater colonialism; memory; tanzania |
Volume: | 6 |
Issue: | 2 |
First page: | 4 |
Last Page: | 22 |
Organizational units: | Philosophische Fakultät / Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik |
DDC classification: | 4 Sprache / 40 Sprache / 400 Sprache |
License (German): | CC-BY-NC-ND - Namensnennung, nicht kommerziell, keine Bearbeitungen 4.0 International |