2022: Abstract Jean Bertrand Miguoué

Last but not least, the Mbembe controversy in the spring and summer of 2020 has made it clear to what extent a discussion of different layers and dimensions of German cultural memory remains controversial and emotionally charged. The fact that a comparative examination of different layers of a German culture of remembrance is perceived by at least part of the public as an equation or as a hierarchy became increasingly clear in this media-mediated and international debate. The Mbembe debate has indeed made visible a selective approach to the German culture of remembrance as well as a suppression of German world history in the form of colonial amnesia or a forgetting of the Atlantic slave trade. It has also raised the questions of whether a discussion of one form of memory excludes the others, how different forms can be made productive in a complex German and European culture of remembrance and how this can be investigated using the example of literary and cultural productions.