Austere Histories: Social Exclusion and the Erasure of Colonial Memories in European Societies

Abstract

European societies have recently turned toward more austere political regimes. Evidence of this can be seen in budget cuts, management of the labor market and restrictions of welfare systems, as well as in new regimes of migration and citizenship. Against the backdrop of such processes, this project investigates how a current politics of austerity affects our cultural memory. This project seeks to extract the correlation between how minorities, migrants and their descendants are treated by present policies and how memories and experiences of migrants, minorities and colonized peoples are treated in historiography and historical pedagogy. The project is unique in the sense that it brings together social scientists analyzing ethnic relations and migration in contemporary Europe and historians studying Europe?s history and cultural memory. It is also potentially path breaking as it crosses borders between languages and academic traditions and initiates a truly inter-European academic discussion on scholarly and intellectual concerns that are deeply shared by most national communities of Europe but usually studied only in the contexts of the various nation states.

Keywords:

Description

European societies have recently turned toward more austere political regimes. Evidence of this can be seen in budget cuts, management of the labor market and restrictions of welfare systems, as well as in new regimes of migration and citizenship. In the wake of these changes new forms of social inclusion and exclusion appear that are justified through a reactivation of differences of race, class and gender, all this serving, in its turn, to justify new forms of labor extraction and the formation of a new underclass or 'precariat'. Another consequence is that democracy itself has become precarious. While the agents and adherents of austerity programs impose themselves as democracy?s saviors, practitioners of democracy find themselves pushed toward the extra-parliamentary margins.

Against the backdrop of such processes, this project investigates how a current politics of austerity affects our cultural memory. Are we witnessing a turn toward austerity in theories and practices of historiography, as well as in pedagogies of history? Can we speak of an austere historiography, an enforcement of conformity on Europe past and present?

Some observers have argued that this development entails the privileging of certain narratives of the European past, whereas other parts of the cultural heritage are weeded out. In their view, strong interests are at work to purge the histories of specific European nations, but also those of Europe, the West, and globalization from cultural plurality. This would mean that heroic and homogeneous stories about the past of nations, regions, institutions and religions are being retold, reinvented, and re-launched. It is thus important to investigate to what extent history (including public debate on history and history education) is again becoming 'nationalistic', or becoming 'cosmopolitan' -- and to what extent this cosmopolitan turn tends to celebrate the achievements of Europe and posit the West as a model of universality, humanism and perhaps also of the human as such.

The project investigates how this debate varies in different European countries. In many national contexts, multiculturalism, postcolonial memories, and minority discourses have been marginalized. What is lost is the very complexity and contradictoriness of Europe and the West. Especially, colonial and postcolonial memories are evicted from their recently claimed habitats in the European past, and again seen as being external to Europe?s past.

This development is a cause of concern for political and ethical reasons, for it cuts off Europe?s access to the very sources of its auto-critique. It is also troubling from a research point of view. It was only recently that Europe?s colonial and postcolonial memories stared to become retrieved and acknowledged in the first place. Now, as is seen in Britain, France, Italy, Netherlands, Denmark and elsewhere, an increasing number of historians and intellectuals are again becoming blind to these less gratifying parts of Europe?s history. Probably, it is still too early to speak of a historical revisionism in the strict sense, for there are also important counter tendencies at work, from parts of the academic community and from postcolonial and migrant communities and organizations. Still, a transformation is set in motion that corresponds to the new politics of ?Austerity? that is impatient with both democracy and the past.

Europe's legacy of fascism and genocidal war together with the processes of decolonization constituted the last major crisis afflicting the European project. This crisis generated an acknowledgment of the deep relation of fascism and colonialism. If there is an emerging historiography of austerity today, one of its main targets is precisely this intellectual heritage and conclusion concerning the fact that European enlightenment is a dialectical process; if this dialectical nature is suppressed, the constitutive relationship of colonialism to the European project will simply be disavowed. Enlightenment will then again become what it was before the revelatory moment of Auschwitz: a naïve belief in and backing of the colonizer's civilizing mission.

This project will thus seek to extract the correlation between how minorities, migrants and their descendants are treated by present policies and how memories and experiences of migrants, minorities and colonized peoples are treated in historiography and historical pedagogy. The project is unique in the sense that it brings together social scientists analyzing ethnic relations and migration in contemporary Europe and historians studying Europe?s history and cultural memory. It is also potentially path breaking as it crosses borders between languages and academic traditions and initiates a truly inter-European academic discussion on scholarly and intellectual concerns that are deeply shared by most national communities of Europe but usually studied only in the contexts of the various nation states.

Other Academic Output

International Symposium. Austere Histories: Social Exclusion and the Erasure of Colonial Memories in European Societies. Campus Norrköping, 28-29 Nov. 2013.
Participants:
Nicolas Bancel, Université de Lausanne, Switzerland
Gurminder K Bhambra, The University of Warwick, Great Britain
Manuela Boatca, Freie Universität, Germany
Esther Captain, National Committee for the Remembrance of WWII, Netherlands
Nacira Guénif-Souilamas, Université de Paris X, France
Peo Hansen, REMESO, Linköping University, Sweden
Lars Jensen, Roskilde University, Denmark
Nicola Labanca, Università degli Studi di Siena, Italy
Robbie Shilliam, Queen Mary, University of London, Great Britain
Kuratorisk Aktion (Tone Olaf Nielsen & Frederikke Hansen), Denmark
David Gaunt, Södertörn University
Stefan Helgesson, Stockholm University
Carsten Juhl, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Denmark
Mikela Lundahl, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Edda Manga, Uppsala University
Anders Stephanson, Columbia University, USA
Maria Stern, Göteborg University