DOING MEMORY – DOING RACIAL JUSTICE
More than 200 people – migrants and refugees, LGBTQIA persons, homeless people, … – have been killed in postwar Germany by right-wing perpetrators; on several occasions pogrom-like acts of physical violence took place in German cities. Many of these attacks had largely been forgotten by the general public, probably even remembering the names of the perpetrators move likely than those of the victims and/or survivors. Over the last years, an upturn of activist interventions regarding such acts of right-wing violence takes place. In several cases, conflicts arise between activist groups on the one hand and city officials on the other hand about the issue of how to remember. Often the different perspectives go hand in hand with differences regarding the analysis of the cause and the motive of these attacks, but also regarding the question whose voice should be heard and listened to primarily, who should become visible and how should recognition should look like. Such questions are not least connected to issues such as power and ressources.
Using a selection of cases, this paper asks in which way acts of doing memory regarding right-wing violence in postwar German history have offered/can offer a chance of doing racial justice to the victims and survivors of those attacks. Theoretically informed by research on political culture, memory studies, recognition theory, and postcolonial perspectives on voice and listening we understand doing agonistic memory as performative acts which bring to the forefront the experiences and the situated knowledge of physically attacked (and often structurally discriminated) groups and 'communities'. In several cases, this contributes to the empowerment of individuals and groups involved. In other cases, the highly institutionalized forms of remembering dominate the case. Even more challenging for trying to make the victims/survivors heard and visible as a voice in the polyphonic range of acts of remembrance are situations in which the victims/survivors do not speak out themselves for different reasons. Empirically, the paper refers mainly to acts of non/doing memory in the cities of Moelln, Solingen, Rostock, and Duesseldorf over the period of nearly 30 years.
Raising the voice and creating resonance is key for marginalized groups to get their knowledge, their experience, and their contribution to the society they live in acknowledged and being recognized as equals.
