Presently, we are experiencing regular memory wars in which activists, authors and intellectuals in numerous countries vehemently denounce unacknowledged crimes of colonialism, all the while new colonial-like atrocities happen, and right-wing authoritarian governments misuse the past as means of reinforcing their power. These memory wars have recently reached new heights in Germany and Italy where they affect long-standing collective and individual identities. This panel will show how these private and public memory conflicts are carried out by the means of digital media, city walks, memory activism and literature.
In Italy, the discrepancies between the far-right government’s and grassroot activist’s interpretation of the past is particularly acute. Over the past twenty years, the state has consistently sustained the positive memory of fascism and colonialism through commemorative ritual and public discourse. This continuity is further intensified in the current government´s violent anti-left-wing rhetoric and racialised anti-immigration policies. Currently political polarisation has reached an all-time high, fuelling the ever-increasing rise of antifascist and anticolonial memory activism. In Germany, the emergence of the formerly marginalized memory of colonialism has resulted in heated debates motivating activists, intellectuals and authors equally to either increase their demand for decolonialization, or to warn against amnesia of the Holocaust vis-à-vis the memory of the genocide which the German Reich committed on the Nama and Herero people. These debates have sparked a renegotiation of Germany’s identity which furthermore is under pressure due to the genocide that recently has taken place in Gaza which challenges Germany’s almost unconditioned support of Israel. These macro-political events heavily affect the German-Jewish population which must reposition itself against the backdrop of these historical events and shifts of collective memory.
Jessica Ortner, University of Southern Denmark, “White” narratives about genocide and colonialism – between silencing and implication.
The considerable number of writings by white German authors about Germany’s colonization and the genocide on the Herero and Nama people in the present Namibia is a puzzling phenomenon that raises the question if these writers have the moral right and “authorial legitimacy” to write about these events (Vambe 2022, 97-98). This paper explores three novels that are written by “white” German authors either draw parallels between the genocide on the Herero and Nama people and the Holocaust or between Colonialism and Nazism. Thereby, they potentially look a particular African events through the lens of a Western event. These novels are Amanda Lasker-Berlin Iva atmet (2021), located in Namiba, Christian Krachts Imperium (2012) located in Papa Neu Guinea, and Cristof Haman Usambara (2007) that takes place in Tanzania.
I will investigate how these novels entangle the memories of Nazism, Colonialism and genocide asking if the novels differentiate between these disparate histories or conflate them with each other. Namely, if the memories of colonialism and National Socialism and the genocides committed on African and European soil are represented on par with each other if colonialism merely serves as a foil for representing the more recent memory of National Socialism. These questions are investigated by identifying which perspectives and voices the novels include or omit, asking to what extend the novels represent a more or less explicit feeling of “implication” (Rothberg 2019) either in content or form. Ultimately the paper asks if the authors invent a vocabulary that makes these memories sayable (Rigney 2016) in the public realm or rather appropriate the articulation of the past thereby preventing African perspectives to become part of Germany’s collective memory.
Victoria Witkowski, University of Southern Denmark. Reappraising Rome: Anticolonial Memory Activism in the Eternal City.
This paper explores diverse forms of memory activism surrounding Italian colonialism in Rome in relation to imperial monument debates and the recent rehabilitation of the political far-right over the past decade.
Since the 1990s, scholarly interest in Italian colonialism has increased as researchers have begun to dismantle this unexplored aspect of Italy´s past. This process has been consistently hindered by state actors who have sustained the myth of Italians as ‘good colonisers’ through postfascist/postcolonial commemorations and memory suppression, resulting in delayed intellectual discourse and warped public awareness. More recently, international events have fuelled activists to produce counter memories and highlight Italy’s colonial crimes. The 2017 Unite the Right rally in Virginia and George Floyd´s homicide in 2020 sparked global protests, whereby protesters defaced colonial monuments in support of the Black Lives Matter Movement. First, I will examine the transnational effect of this collective consciousness in Rome, including the defacement of colonial general Baldissera´s bust and the renaming of Via dell´Amba Aradam to Via George Floyd e Bilal Messaud in an act deemed by Italian activists as ´onomastic guerrilla warfare´.
Second, the paper analyses rising anti-colonial memory activism further motivated by the 2022 election, neofascist roots and nationalist identity politics of Italy’s ruling party, Brothers of Italy. In response, grassroot initiatives have grown with the scope of tackling the difficult heritage of fascism and imperialism to connect colonial legacies to current politics. These encompass postcolonial tours of the African Quarter and the recontextualisation of the Dogali monument, aimed at decolonising public spaces and (re)viewing the Eternal City through a critical contemporary lens. In examining these case studies, I reveal the reasons for, and forces behind competing state and activist memories of Italian colonialism today
Erica Capecci, University of Bristol, Memory and the Italian Far Right Online. Representing the ‘Communist Threat” through Mnemonic and Aesthetic Imaginaries of the Past
This paper explores representations of the “communist threat” in the online propaganda of Italian far-right leaders, from the election of current prime minister Giorgia Meloni in 2022 to the present. It investigates how mnemonic and aesthetic imaginaries of the past are reconfigured and incorporated into contemporary far-right discourse to demonize the political opposition.
Using a Multimodal Aesthetic Analysis (MAA), this paper examines the main elements informing anti-left-wing propaganda strategies used online by prominent Italian far-right activists and mainstream politicians. Focusing on Instagram due to the powerful visual communication fostered by this popular platform, the investigation employs methods of social semiotics, historiography, and critical discourse analysis. It considers selected contents shared especially by Giorgia Meloni and Matteo Salvini, current deputy prime minister in Meloni’s cabinet and key representative of the Italian far-right.
The argument highlights ways far-right propaganda online materializes imaginaries of a global “communist threat” to influence perceptions and interpretations in public debates and justify the enforcement of policy agendas that undermine democratic institutions. It explores how mnemonic and aesthetic references to Italy’s fascist and post-fascist past are remodelled in the digital sphere to produce persuasive narratives that legitimise far-right autocratic tendencies to position of power, in Italy and beyond.
Siri Janfelt-Mose, University of Southern Denmark Jewish identity in flux: Memory and hybridity in Dana Vowinckel’s novel Gewässer im Ziplock
Following the terror attack on 7 October 2023 and the ensuing war in Gaza, questions concerning Jewish identity have gained renewed global relevance. In the German context, these questions are particularly complex, shaped by layers of historical threads and cultural sensitivity. This paper presents initial findings from my PhD project, which explores identity constructions in contemporary German Jewish literature against the backdrop of current conflicts and shifts in collective memory.
Focusing on Dana Vowinckel’s novel Gewässer im Ziplock —published just weeks before 7 October and rapidly reframed as a historical novel — I examine how the novel negotiates Jewish identity through its engagement with cultural memory, hybridity, and the sociopolitical tensions of the present. My reading is grounded in postcolonial theory and memory studies, combining concepts by Homi K. Bhabha (1994), Astrid Erll (2011), Michael Rothberg (2009), as well as Michel Foucault’s discourse analysis (2002). The integration of theoretical frameworks from both fields enables a nuanced analysis of the novel’s hybridization of memory and identity, as well as its portrayal of transcultural and transnational dimensions.
My analysis of Vowinckel’s novel reveals a conflicted relationship with Germany’s culture of remembrance, religious affiliation, and cultural belonging. I find that Vowinckel illustrates a contemporary contestation of the memory of antisemitism in a German context and of Jewish self-understanding globally. Thus, my reading of the novel through an interdisciplinary theoretical lens offers important insights into multiple memories and Jewish identities in flux.
20260730T140020260730T1530America/Argentina/Buenos_Aires6.9. Difficult Heritage(s) in the Present: Plurimedial Approaches to the Collective Memory of Colonialism, Nazism and Fascism in Italy and GermanySV403 (ART)MSA Buenos Aires 2026buenosairesconference@memorystudiesassociation.org
