Coming to terms with silenced pasts and overlooked narratives. Musings, questions, and anecdotes drawn from encounters in Berlin with unrecognized remnants of Germany’s colonial history.

Interrogating the Question of “Whose?” and its Implications

The following is the beginning of a conceptual glossary developed by the working group “On Being Human or Not” for the seminar Whose? Reading the Anthropocene and the Technosphere from Africa, which took place during Anthropocene Campus 2016. It takes as its starting point the issue of silenced pasts and overlooked narratives, particularly as they pertain to the colonial era, and the persistence of this silencing (and its attendant power relations) in the present—in our so-called postcolonial times.