Transnational genealogies

Doctoral group, Head: PD Dr. Stefanie Michels

The junior research group “Transnational Genealogies” investigated the mobility of actors, objects and ideas between Africa, Europe and the Americas, focusing on the question of how normative orders are changed by transnational movements and how these are represented from different perspectives. The participating young researchers focused on the actions and reactions to normative orders. This not only highlighted the conflict-laden tensions, counter-histories and subversive uses of normative orders, but also the plurality of different justification narratives and their interdependence. The genealogical perspective also reveals the dynamic, yet historically connected character of these processes. Non-European actors were considered and the tensions between clashing normative orders (such as colonialism and African systems of order) were examined. The topics of the works were examined against the background of the colonial entanglements of Europe and Africa: translocal and transgenerational family histories; re/production processes of transnational genealogical communities (Benin, Haiti, Germany) through Vodún practices; the crisis nature of racism in its colonial German conjunctures and debates about looted cultural property (icon of Pan-Africanism in the British museum).

Ideas of order are in a relational relationship to their counter-movements and react to them. The research group’s research question shows that mobile actors often challenge hegemonic norms through their translocal experiences with different normative orders. The protagonists of these movements analyzed and discussed the orders they encountered against the background of their own experiences and ideas of order, usually from interdependent perspectives that criticized racism, economic conditions and gender relations in equal measure. In addition to their critical analysis, these perspectives also offer ideas of alternative orders, e.g. of democratic conditions that are hostile to racism. The areas of normative orders examined in the individual projects are international law (Metzger), colonial concepts of order (Hamann), social orders in the diaspora (Bokohonsi) and geneaological entanglements (Michels).

In her political-theoretical work, Ulrike Hamann has placed perspectives that were marginalized in a colonial order of racism at the center of her investigation. The texts of these actors were collected as sources in archives and estates. Through the contradictions and interventions of racially produced subjects, scenes became visible in which the inscription of an order of racism in German and colonized societies was contested. The dissertation shows that both in the colonized societies and in the German Empire itself, actors with African or African-American histories voiced opposition to and criticism of an order based on racism. The strategies ranged from direct criticism of concepts and stereotypes, political democratic means such as petitions, to discursive shifts and the appropriation of hegemonic concepts such as progress. In addition, the respective settings in the empire, Cameroon and present-day Namibia show that modern anti-Semitism inspired colonial racism and accelerated its development into a government technology. Ha¬mann’s work thus shows how the colonial order was increasingly enforced biopolitically. However, it was confronted with ideas of order that were based on equality and rejected a hierarchy of supposed ‘races’. The dissertation has been published as: Ulrike Hamann (2015): Precarious Colonial Order. Racist conjunctures in contradiction. The German colonial regime 1884-1914 Bielefeld: Transcript.

Vodún also referred to an order outside the respective state. The sociological and ethnological project Parfait Bokohonsis showed that different groups of actors who meet in the diaspora through vodún have clear normative ideas of what vodún is, without necessarily resulting in a common order. Bokohonsi looks at actor strategies, forms of knowledge and types of social organization. Legitimacy through norms is central to the organization of Vodún. At the same time, the field is highly flexible. On the one hand, the historical dynamics of the vodún order were demonstrated by the movement of various actors, initially in the context of slavery in the Americas. The Haitian form of voodoo has become known worldwide, particularly in the context of the Haitian revolution from 1791. Today, both in Benin and in Europe, mobile actors encounter changed and co-existing norms in the vodún field. This creates what Bokohonsi calls a new transnational dynamic of norm change. Bokohonsi regards the transnational activity of the actors as a resource for both community building and the respective social status in the diaspora. The results were published as: Bokohonsi, Sênami Parfait (2012): ‘Vodún between religion and politics. On the significance of pre-colonial political structures in Benin”, in: Holger Zapf (ed.): Non-Western political thought. Between cultural difference and hybridization Springer: Wiesbaden.

Ronja Metzger’s work examines the field of actors and actresses involved in current disputes over former colonial looted property. Her ethnographic research in Nigeria and Great Britain brought to light how different ideas of right and wrong still are today, especially against the backdrop of colonialism. Especially since the normative order on the basis of which these issues can be negotiated today, international law, also emerged in a context of colonial power. Metzger’s analyses clearly show, however, that the positions are not only located along the former dividing line between colonial power and the colonized, but that they have multiplied and become ambiguous.

The most important publications also include:
Michels, Stefanie (2013): “Schutzherrschaft revisited – Kolonialismus aus afrikanischer Perspektive”, in: Andreas Fahrmeir/Annette Warner (eds.): The diversity of normative orders. Conflicts and dynamics from a historical and ethnological perspective . Frankfurt/M.: Campus, 243-274
Michels, Stefanie; Félix-Eyoum, Jean-Pierre; Zeller, Joachim (eds.) (2011): Duala und Deutschland – verflochtene Geschichte: Die Familie Manga Bell und koloniale Beutekunst: Der Tangue der Bele Bele, Köln: Schmidt von Schwind Verlag, 33-41
Michels, Stefanie; Hamann, Ulrike (2011): ‘From Disagreement to Dissension. African Perspectives on Germany”, in: Wulf D. Hund/Christian Koller/Moshe Zimmermann (eds.), Racisms made in Germany (Yearbook Racism Analysis 2), 145-164
Bokohonsi, Parfait, Ulrike Hamann, Stefanie Michels, Ronja Metzger (2011): ” ‘Plenty trouble!'” What is the Tangué from Cameroon doing in the Munich Ethnographic Museum?“, Cologne: Schmidt von Schwind Verlag, 38-40
Bokohonsi, Parfait, Ulrike Hamann, Ronja Metzger, Stefanie Michels “Koloniale Beutekunst und das andauernde Verstecken hinter rechtlichen Konzepten”, in: Forum Recht 3/2011: “Import/Export – Koloniales Recht und postkoloniale Perspektiven”
Hamann, Ulrike (2014): “A Historical Claim for Justice: Re-Configuring the Enlightenment for and from the Margins,” in: Nikita Dhawan (ed.), Decolonizing Enlightenment, Opladen: Barabara Budrich, 139-151
Metzger, Ronja (2011): “Kultur in der Debatte. Summer School of Ethnologists at Goethe University”, (together with Kathrin Knodel), in: UniReport der Goethe-Universität (Frankfurt am Main) 5, 14

The most important events were the panel: “Mobile Actors” at the conference of the Association of African Studies in Germany (University of Cologne), June 2012; the panel: “Mobile Actors” at the EXC Normative Orders conference for young researchers, November 2011; the international conference on “(Post-)Colonialism between Cameroon and Germany” in Frankfurt/Main (in cooperation with the University of Yaoundé, Cameroon) (third-party funds raised: 14.000 EUR), September 2011; the workshop “Entangled Histories”, Goethe University, January 2010 and Ulrike Hamann’s participation in the FRCPS conference “Colonial Legacies, Postcolonial Contestations. International Graduate Conference” 2011, organization and moderation of a panel.

The research results of the individual projects are – also thanks to their inherent transdisciplinarity – compatible with several fields of research.
Hamann’s historically derived power analysis of racism is just as interesting for migration and racism research as it is for post-colonial theorizing and anti-Semitism research. But historical research can also find in Hamann’s work both on the history of black people in Germany and on German colonial history a well-founded reappraisal of sources (e.g. on colonial urban planning in Cameroon). More in-depth research on black perspectives on the German context before and after the colonial state order would be conceivable and desirable.

Bokohonsi’s work has provided an innovative impetus for both diaspora research and the sociology of religion, primarily due to her sociological perspective on religious practices. Empirical data obtained through the ethnological method of field research in Benin, Germany and France form a separate contribution to research in these areas.
Metzger’s research fanned out the field of discussion on colonial plunder in its entire breadth. She enriched it with extensive data material from her own field research and thus offers a contribution for all those involved in ethnological collections, museum policies and postcolonial reclamations.
Stefanie Michels contributed the results of her research on cosmopolitan family history in international contexts, contributing in particular to the conceptual sharpening in the field of global history (“Cosmopolitanism”, IEG Mainz; “Family”, GHI London). The work with photographic documents of the Bell family led to an expansion of research in the direction of a global history of photography. To this end, further publication and research projects emerged following the project.