Sensing Loss – Uni Köln goes r e t u r n: 60 Minutes AnthroLab.

Donnerstags 16:30-17:30Uhr 

Dr. Simone Pfeifer (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt): Wer wird gehört? Postdigitale Erinnerung nach rechter Gewalt in der postmigrantischen Gesellschaft

How do we commemorate racist violence, and who decides which stories are heard?
Memory has become a contested social arena that determines whose experiences matter in the public sphere, who is heard, who is allowed to speak, which experiences are acknowledged, and what future remains conceivable for a democratic society.
The lecture takes as its starting point the attacks in Hanau (2020) and Christchurch (2019) and examines how various civil society and municipal actors are responding to the profound turning point marked by right-wing, and in particular racist, violence. Right-wing violence never affects only individual people. It damages social relationships, shatters notions of belonging, alters perceptions of urban spaces, and leaves its mark on the media and political spheres. Using the examples of the racist and anti-Muslim racist attacks in Hanau (2020) and Christchurch (2019), this presentation will examine the forms of remembrance that emerge after such acts of violence, as well as where and how remembrance takes place in the post-digital and post-migrant space. Which voices become visible and audible, and where do conflicts arise over the interpretation and shaping of memory? How can we navigate these contested memories to build a shared future?

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Die Diskussionsreihe Sensing Loss bringt ethnologische Forschungen aus der Universität ins Museum. Sozial- und Kulturanthropolog:innen aller Karrierestufen berichten aus ihren aktuellen Forschungen, wie Menschen Verlust erfahren und Verlusterfahrungen bearbeiten. Sensing Loss fragt, wie Verlust begegnet, verkörpert und verräumlicht wird – und wie aus Vertreibung, Enteignung und vergangenem Unrecht neue Zukünfte gewonnen werden können. Erfahrungen des Verlusts (loss), ihre Konfrontation und Aufarbeitung [r e t u r n] sind dabei so vielfältig wie die Situationen, in denen Menschen Kolonialismus, Marginalisierung oder Gewalt begegnen. Die öffentlichen Vorträge diskutieren Formen des Sensing, über die Menschen Verlust gewahr werden, und Sense Making, d.h. die Frage, wie Menschen Verlusterfahrungen eine Bedeutung verleihen. Trauer, Verlust und Erinnerung können zur Quelle werden, Ansprüche an die Gegenwart zu artikulieren und zwischen Menschen und Orten, Vergangenheit und Zukunft neue Verbindungen zu erarbeiten. Im Sinne der Ausstellung r e t u r n  beschäftigen sich die Vorträge mit ganz unterschiedlichen Momenten und Formen der Trauer, der Nostalgie, der Erinnerungsarbeit und des gemeinsamen Aufbruchs. 

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The lecture series Sensing Loss connects anthropological thinking across university and museum spaces. Social and cultural anthropologists at all career stages discuss their ongoing research to explore how people sense and make sense of loss. Sensing Loss asks how loss is experienced, embodied and spatialized – and how displacement, dispossession and past injustices can become sources for new future-making practices. Experiences of loss, their confrontation, and the ways in which people try to come to terms with them – and find ways to r e t u r n – are as diverse as the situations in which people experience colonialism, violence or marginalization.

The public lectures discuss how grief, loss and remembrance can become resources for articulating claims on the present, and for shaping new connections between people and places, past and future. In resonance with the exhibition r e t u r n at the RJM, the lectures engage with diverse moments and forms of grief, nostalgia and memory work, as well as with joint departures into new futures.