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The Kaiser's Holocaust: the coloniality of German's forgotten genocide of the Nama and the Herero of Namibia
The oft-quoted number of six million Jews who perished in the tragic event of the German Holocaust is probably approximately the same number of Africans who were killed in the Congo under King Leopold II, alone. This same number is much less than the total number of Africans who died as a result of direct and indirect colonial policies in Africa. Furthermore, Africans who lost lives during the Trans-Saharan and Trans-Atlantic slave trade are several millions more than the number of Jews who lost lives in the German Holocaust. To put it this way is not at all to minimize the suffering of the Jews. It is an attempt to reveal the unequal workings of the geopolitics of knowledge production because the catastrophe on Africans or blacks is hardly described as a holocaust in academic scholarship. This tendency to diminish the pain of Africans is not accidental; it reveals the devious workings of the phenomena of the coloniality of power. This paper uses and thinks with Olusoga and Erichsen's book, The Kaiser's Holocaust (2010), to manifest the features of the coloniality of power. The paper argues that in The Kaiser's Holocaust, military expeditions by German colonists that led to direct colonial rule over the Nama and the Herero constitute the first aspect of the coloniality of power. The conditions of starvation and overworking enforced on the Nama and the Herero, which led to the extermination of these African populations, make up the second aspect of the coloniality of Germany's power. And, how the mass murder of the Nama and the Herero in particular, and the brutal killings of Africans in colonial Africa are reported and have come to be described as massacres, or genocide and not holocaust demonstrates the manifestation of the third pillar of the coloniality of power in European scholarship that names Africans as less human or Other.
The Kaiser's Holocaust: the coloniality of German's forgotten genocide of the Nama and the Herero of Namibia
The oft-quoted number of six million Jews who perished in the tragic event of the German Holocaust is probably approximately the same number of Africans who were killed in the Congo under King Leopold II, alone. This same number is much less than the total number of Africans who died as a result of direct and indirect colonial policies in Africa. Furthermore, Africans who lost lives during the Trans-Saharan and Trans-Atlantic slave trade are several millions more than the number of Jews who lost lives in the German Holocaust. To put it this way is not at all to minimize the suffering of the Jews. It is an attempt to reveal the unequal workings of the geopolitics of knowledge production because the catastrophe on Africans or blacks is hardly described as a holocaust in academic scholarship. This tendency to diminish the pain of Africans is not accidental; it reveals the devious workings of the phenomena of the coloniality of power. This paper uses and thinks with Olusoga and Erichsen's book, The Kaiser's Holocaust (2010), to manifest the features of the coloniality of power. The paper argues that in The Kaiser's Holocaust, military expeditions by German colonists that led to direct colonial rule over the Nama and the Herero constitute the first aspect of the coloniality of power. The conditions of starvation and overworking enforced on the Nama and the Herero, which led to the extermination of these African populations, make up the second aspect of the coloniality of Germany's power. And, how the mass murder of the Nama and the Herero in particular, and the brutal killings of Africans in colonial Africa are reported and have come to be described as massacres, or genocide and not holocaust demonstrates the manifestation of the third pillar of the coloniality of power in European scholarship that names Africans as less human or Other.
The Kaiser's Holocaust: the coloniality of German's forgotten genocide of the Nama and the Herero of Namibia
Khan, Khatija Bibi (author)
African Identities ; 10 ; 211-220
2012-08-01
10 pages
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
Leitartikel: >>Des Kaiser's neue Kleider?<<
| Online Contents | 1995
Engineering Index Backfile | 1895
Leitartikel: Des Kaiser's neue Kleider
| Online Contents | 1996