Comparativ (E-Journal)

van der Westhuizen, Christi

Everyday Interpretations of African Independence: A Discussion

Blum, Constanze

In this monograph, Joost Fontein inves-
tigates the complex political implications 
of human remains in post-independence 
Zimbabwe. He takes the reader to vari-
ous sites of resurfacing bones and cases of 
restless spirits and describes how corpo-
real and immaterial human remains are 
exploited by political actors, on the one 
hand, and exercise their own agency, on 
the other hand. He conceptualizes this as 
the “politics of the dead”, offering a new 
lens to look at Zimbabwe’s violent post-in-
dependence politics. The book covers the 
time period between 2000 and 2020, with 
a primary focus on the years until 2015. 
Based on rich source material, Fontein’s 
work engages with a variety of cases, rang-
ing from the ongoing exhumation efforts 
of victims of the Gukurahundi genocide 
in the 1980s to post-electoral violence in 
the 2000s and prominent political deaths 
in the 2010s. Apart from making a signifi-
cant contribution to the growing research 
field on the anthropology of death, it also 
speaks to memory politics and the politics 
of commemoration as well as the literature 
corpus on nationalist historiographies in 
Southern Africa. 
The monograph consists of 349 pages 
and is divided into an introduction, seven 
chapters, and a conclusion. In the intro-
duction, Fontein outlines the book’s main 
arguments, which centre around (1) the 
“agency of things” – human remains im-
pact on politics – as well as (2) the “power 
of uncertainty”, which is attached to both 
bones and spirits and creates opportunities 
for political instrumentalization. In chap-
ter 1, Fontein discusses the legacy of the 
liberation struggle and how it continues to 
shape contemporary Zimbabwean politics 
via spirit mediums and “chimurenga poli-
tics”.[1] Chapter 2 examines the work of 
the National Museums and Monuments 
of Zimbabwe (NMMZ), a central actor in 
Zimbabwean commemoration politics. In 
particular, it explores the tensions between 
professional practices, contested national 
histories, and the demands of marginal-
ized communities in commemorative and 
heritage processes. Chapter 3 describes 
the widely publicized and politicized 
Chibondo exhumations, a case where over 
700 bodies dumped in a mine shaft by 
the Ian Smith regime were discovered in 
the early 2000s. In chapter 4, the author 
investigates the “suspicious” death of the 
REZENSIONEN | REVIEWS
Joost Fontein: The Politics of the 
Dead in Zimbabwe, 2000–2020: 
Bones, Rumours and Spirits, Wood-
bridge, Suffolk; Rochester, NY: James 
Currey 2022, 349 pp. [e-book].
Reviewed by 
Constanze Blum, Leipzig
Rezensionen | Reviews | 347
politician Solomon Mujuru from the Zim-
babwe African National Union–Patriotic 
Front (ZANU-PF) in 2011, a particularly 
high-profile case in a string of “political 
accidents” surrounded by rumours and 
speculations that characterize the “unfin-
ished nature” of death in Zimbabwe (p. 
182). Chapters 5 and 6 then delve into 
the (political) significance of ancestors 
and spirit mediums by detailing the highly 
publicized “diesel n’anga” case as well as 
the largely unknown story of Mai Melissa, 
a medium for the restless spirit of her late 
father, a Mozambican migrant. The final 
chapter explores the politicking around 
Robert Mubage’s burial in 2019. Fontein 
concludes by proposing future cases of 
inquiry, including deaths related to HIV, 
cholera, and the Covid-19 pandemic. The 
book comes full circle by sketching the 
current debate on restituting the spiritual 
leader Mbuya Nehanda’s (alleged) skull 
from the British Museum, an example 
in which the political potential of uncer-
tainty becomes especially salient. It is these 
uncertainties and the “incompleteness” of 
death that continue to be “politically pro-
ductive” (p. 282).
Fontein’s analysis spans across a variety of 
interesting cases, from the returning spirit 
of Nehanda, who opposed British colo-
nialism and was executed in 1898, to the 
state-sponsored violence of the ZANU-PF 
regime post-1980. His case selection in-
cludes both material and spiritual remains, 
“dry bones”, and “tortured bodies” (both 
p. 35) and compellingly undergirds his 
central argument that it is not only politics 
impacting on bodies, but also bones and 
spirits, the “excessivity of human remains” 
(p. 121), that are impacting on politics. 
Although the ruling party tries to make 
use of human remains and to “manage” 
their transformations, the “unruly dead” 
(p. 3) do not always serve the ruling party. 
The richness of the material is one of 
the great strengths of this book. Fontein 
makes use of existing anthropological lit-
erature (e.g. chapter 2), parliamentary 
debates and newspaper articles (e.g. chap-
ter 4), interviews (e.g. introduction), and 
ethnographic field notes of impressive 
detail (e.g. chapter 6). This diversity of 
sources makes the book very easy to read. 
Fontein shows a special interest in institu-
tional actors, such as the NMMZ and the 
Fallen Heroes Trust (FHT). He describes 
NMMZ staff as sitting uncomfortably be-
tween two chairs, as professionals caught 
up in politics. They are under substantial 
political pressure, but “against all odds” 
and as opposed to other civil servant struc-
tures they are described as having remained 
committed to the cause (p. 301). He draws 
an empathetic and complex picture of this 
central institution and of the people mak-
ing it up. Moreover, he describes the ten-
sions between “vernacular exhumers” (i.e. 
the FHT as war veteran group) and the 
NMMZ and how politics of commemo-
ration in Zimbabwe are often shaped by 
narratives juxtaposing “international” (or 
“Western”) practices with “African” ways 
of doing things (p. 123). This also high-
lights the challenging task of disentangling 
the study of cultural practices from the 
external (European, colonial) gaze and the 
ongoing pushback processes that take the 
form of (re-)Africanization. While new 
and important insights into the NMMZ 
as a key actor in the liberation heritage 
project are provided throughout the book, 
chapter 2 also offers a specific section on 
institutions tasked with reconciliation – 
348 | Rezensionen | Reviews
namely the Organ for National Healing, 
Reconciliation and Integration (ONHRI) 
and its successor, the National Peace and 
Reconciliation Commission (NPRC), two 
hitherto under-researched institutions.
The author writes without trivializing or 
essentializing the communities and the 
(politico-)cultural practices he describes. 
Notably, he takes spirit encounters seri-
ously and does not reduce them to their 
“social functionality” (p. 192). Fontein 
describes individual fates with much 
care, such as the death of Gift Tandare, 
a young member of the opposition who 
was killed by police in 2007 in Harare 
(chapter 2). Taking into account both the 
politico-structural dimension as well as 
the family-related and cultural dimension 
of how his death was handled, Fontein 
carves out “competing” and often “inter-
meshing” attachments to the dead (p. 45), 
which highlight the complexities of death 
in Zimbabwe. Indeed, the author reflects 
on the challenging task of writing about 
“fleshy, leaky” bodies; soft tissue damage; 
and “disrupted bodily boundaries” on sev-
eral occasions (e.g. on p. 111). The topic 
is naturally uncomfortable for the reader, 
but the author manages to treat this deli-
cate subject matter with great sensitivity. 
It is one of the cornerstones of anthropo-
logical epistemologies to be context specif-
ic and not to venture into generalizations. 
However, at times it would have been help-
ful for the reader to have a more compre-
hensive overview of similar (or different) 
practices across the region in order to con-
textualize the described observations and 
carve out potential specificities related to 
the Zimbabwean context. Although there 
are references to other cases, for example 
Malagasy and Rwandan practices around 
death, they remain limited. References to 
countries in the same subregion would 
have been especially enriching in this re-
gard, particularly for researchers interested 
in the transnational and regional dimen-
sions of memory politics. ZANU-PF’s re-
flections on how to turn former guerrilla 
camps in Mozambique and Zambia into 
places of commemoration (mentioned 
briefly on p. 301) may provide one inter-
esting vantage point for future research. 
To summarize, The Politics of the Dead is 
an important and innovative contribution 
to the literature on Zimbabwean post-in-
dependence politics as well as the interplay 
between cultural and political practices 
around death. It provides a fresh perspec-
tive on the second half of the Mugabe era 
and a bridge into the post-2017 political 
milieu, where hopes for change following 
Mugabe’s ousting have quickly dissipated. 
This monograph is an essential read not 
only for researchers and students working 
on the anthropology of death and memory 
politics, but also and especially for those 
who are trying to make sense of the vio-
lence of post-independence Zimbabwean 
politics. 
Note
1 The author cites Panashe Chigumadzi, These 
Bones Will Rise Again, London 2018. 


English

Joost Fontein: The Politics of the Dead in Zimbabwe, 2000–2020: Bones, Rumours and Spirits, Woodbridge, Suffolk; Rochester, NY: James Currey 2022, 349 pp. [e-book].

Middell, Matthias

364 | Rezensionen | Reviews
Notes
1 D. Bell, The Coming of Post-industrial Society: 
A Venture in Social Forecasting, New York 1973; 
J.-F. Lyotard, La condition postmoderne: rap-
port sur le savoir, Paris 1979.
2 T. Benn, F. Morrell and F. Cripps, A Ten-Year In-
dustrial Strategy for Britain, London [1975]; S. 
Hall, The Great Moving Right Show, in: Marx-
ism Today (January 1979), pp. 14–20.
3 E. Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: The Short 
Twentieth Century, 1914–1991, London 1994; 
H. Kaelble, The 1970s in Europe: A Period of 
Disillusionment or Promise? (German Historical 
Institute, The 2009 Annual Lecture), London 
2010; J. Tomlinson, De-industrialization Not 
Decline: A New Meta-narrative for Post-war 
British History, in: 20th Century British History 
27 (2016) 1, pp. 76–99; A. Doering-Manteuffel, 
L. Raphael, Nach dem Boom: Perspektiven auf 
die Zeitgeschichte seit 1970, Göttingen 2008.
4 D. Edgerton, The Rise and Fall of the British 
Nation: A Twentieth-Century History, London 
2018, p. 497.
Konrad Lawson / Riccardo Bavaj /  
Bernhard Struck (eds.): A Guide to 
Spatial History: Areas, Aspects, and 
Avenues of Research, Abingdon / 
New York: Routledge, 2022, 308 pp.
Reviewed by
Matthias Middell, Leipzig
“Space matters!” not only has become the 
rallying cry of critical geographers who are 
finding a new centrality of their discipline 
within the humanities, but also has turned 
many disciplines upside down. Spatial 
history has established itself as a new sub-
discipline within the historical sciences, 
encompassing a wide range of approach-
es that have been given a further boost 
through encounters with the data-driven 
digital humanities. This volume provides 
an introduction to this recently so success-
ful sub-discipline and is, at the same time, 
an original contribution to its continued 
development.
As the title suggests, the authors are con-
cerned with the practice of spatial history. 
In the first part, they discuss the value of 
source genres. In the second part, they 
ask about the suitability of certain spa-
tial configurations (from oceans to bor-
der zones) for doing spatial history, and 
in the third part, they discuss theoretical 
concepts and their applicability. The vol-
ume emerged from the close collaboration 
among a group of historians at the Insti-
tute for Transnational and Spatial His-
tory at the University St Andrews, whose 
networks were mobilized from Greece to 
Texas, from New Zealand to Canada and 
Ireland, guaranteeing the diversity of ex-
amples used in the volume to illustrate 
and ground the theoretical claims. In this 
way, we actually learn how spatial history 
is done in various contexts.
The introduction starts by painting a pic-
ture of a broad field in which many experi-
ments are undertaken that relate to both 
the materiality of space and its discursive 
production. The core of a spatial history 
focused on modern history, however, is an 
engagement “with practices of territorial-
ization, the drawing of borders and cre-
ation of infrastructures” (p. 1). This fixa-
tion on territory and territorialization is 
reinforced by the fascination with the new 
possibilities opened up by GIS technology. 
This characterizes spatial history, especially 
in the USA, for which the Stanford-based 
Spatial History Project, founded in 2007, 
was particularly influential. Regarding this 
Rezensionen | Reviews | 365
interesting project, Richard White pos-
tulated that it was about the “creation of 
visual representations of the interrelation 
of time and space through digital tools”[1] 
– an approach that is also followed by the 
Routledge Companion to Spatial History, 
published in 2018. However, it should not 
be forgotten that GIS by no means pro-
duces innocent data but is in itself a prod-
uct and instrument of territorialization 
processes. The fact that these processes are 
so central can be seen when considering 
the obvious influence of historical geogra-
phers in the field of spatial history, who are 
primarily interested in the history of the 
nineteenth and twentieth centuries and 
therefore focus primarily on the heyday of 
territorialization (primarily in the West). 
Looking back at earlier historical epochs 
is therefore often viewed through the 
paradigm of a not-yet-complete territori-
alization, just as non-European history is 
contrasted with a seemingly complete ter-
ritorialization in France as a history of def-
icits. From a global historical perspective, 
this perspective is stimulating and plausi-
ble insofar as the connection between glo-
balization projects and territorialization is 
addressed, but it is also unsatisfactory in 
parts because alternative processes of re-
spatialization remain unexposed.
In a multi-perspective global history, it is 
imperative not to ignore the importance of 
approaches that focus on space- and place-
making. Such approaches reveal, as the 
authors of the introduction quite rightly 
emphasize, “an acute sensitivity to the 
historical contingency and cultural con-
structedness of space” (p. 2). In the view 
of this reviewer, it is worth going one step 
further here and asking how the historical 
actors dealt with this contingency, thereby 
not simply taking their spatial literacy for 
granted but making it an object of empiri-
cal investigation. For it is evident that spa-
tial configurations are highly diverse and 
by no means “objectively” arranged in a 
clear hierarchy. This hierarchy is created by 
historical actors who have a certain ability 
to “read space” and impose their own ideas 
of how this space should be organized. It 
is only by paying attention to the power 
relations inscribed in this process that a 
critical spatial history as well as a critical 
cartography of “established” maps and at-
lases can emerge. Space loses its apparent 
neutrality and is transformed into a spatial 
order. This happens in the immediate local 
space as well as in the political space of rule 
and statehood.
As globalization progresses, ambitions to 
bring the entire world into a spatial order 
emerge (approximately since the eigh-
teenth century, sometimes even somewhat 
earlier). However, this ambition remains 
unfulfilled. Globalization projects emerge 
that not only compete with each other 
but also cooperate, because, although 
they claim to order the world, they are ul-
timately only able to order one part that 
is particularly relevant for the respective 
actors. Spatial history is therefore global 
history from a certain perspective and vice 
versa, because a central dynamic of mod-
ern globalization processes is directed to-
wards the ordering of the world – not only 
through military and political action but 
also through economic interdependencies 
via value chains and the construction of 
corresponding infrastructures. This is ac-
companied by imagined world orders that 
are culturally shaped in various ways and 
also have a spatial dimension.
366 | Rezensionen | Reviews
However, the editors of the volume rightly 
argue at various points that the importance 
of the spatial dimension for understand-
ing history corresponds to the place that 
this dimension occupies in education. If 
one looks for a place at universities where 
space-making, mapping, or spatial literacy 
is discussed, then it is more likely to be his-
torical geography (a sub-discipline that is 
now marginalized in many countries, even 
within geography) than history. And, of 
course, there are the many facets of geopo-
litical thinking that play a role in the social 
sciences – often normatively charged and 
presented with revisionist intent.
This volume is an excellent introduction 
to changing this. It is clearly written by 
academics who have experience of teach-
ing space-making and present their argu-
ments in a didactically concise manner. 
The introduction shows that there is no 
universalist version of spatial history, high-
lighting that the North American version 
(mainly concentrated on the West Coast), 
for example, differs from a French version 
in which the impulses of Henri Lefebvre, 
Michel Foucault, and the Annales school 
continue to be felt. In Germany, by con-
trast, the prominence of geopolitics and 
cartography in the expansion of the Third 
Reich led to a notable absence of maps 
in the arguments of most disciplines af-
ter 1945. Added to this are the influences 
of the respective historical contexts: the 
Cold War, the globalization euphoria of 
the 1990s, the conflicts over the fate of 
the Palestinian state or the collapsing So-
viet Union or Yugoslavia, migration and 
porous borders of nation-states, world-
wide chains of goods and value creation, 
the new role of urban centres as possible 
global cities, etc. etc. The term spatial turn 
holds together a bundle of different devel-
opments rather than describing a homoge-
neous phenomenon. 
The first chapter, written by Bernhard 
Struck and Riccardo Bavaj, focuses on 
maps and takes the example of nineteenth-
century Poland as a space colonized by 
Russia, in which a cartography developed 
posing the question of power through 
counter-mapping. This example makes it 
clear that maps are not graphic representa-
tions of facts but rather instruments in a 
dispute for which there are, however, rules 
that are administered by an increasingly 
professionalizing community of cartog-
raphers. The controversial nature of these 
rules was recently demonstrated by a very 
prominent example, the ethno-nationalist 
carte rouge produced by Hungarian car-
tographers at the end of the First World 
War, in Daniel Segyevy’s Leipzig disserta-
tion. Other examples in this section of 
possible sources of spatial history are travel 
guides; trajectories of individuals described 
in various forms of literature, including 
autobiographies and memoirs; newspapers; 
and architectural drawings. In all cases, the 
authors use many examples to illustrate 
how a new perspective on these traditional 
source genres can emerge when the spatial 
lens is held up in front of the eye.
The second part of the book is entitled 
“Exploring Spaces” and follows the ac-
tors of space-making first into maritime 
history, which is explored with ships, and 
next into the history of everyday life, with 
a special look at the places of collective 
leisure. By taking a closer look at rivers 
that connect regions and infrastructures 
that give order to space, the section fi-
nally arrives at border zones, which have 
experienced a multi-faceted rise in recent 
Rezensionen | Reviews | 367
years – as contact zones, as transitions 
where the qualitative difference between 
empire and nation-state can be clearly 
demonstrated, or as places where hybrid 
identities are constantly recharged due to 
ongoing migration. All five chapters are 
highly interesting in their own right and 
demonstrate the fruitfulness of spatial his-
tory. However, what is a little bit lacking is 
a systematic approach that makes it clear 
why these particular examples were chosen 
and not others, for which it could equally 
be claimed that they add new facets to spa-
tial history.
This leads the reader to the third section, 
in which concepts, tools, and approaches 
are reflected upon. It begins with a dis-
cussion of “Lefebvrean landscapes” as a 
tension between physical space and so-
cial space, manifested in various forms as 
“representations of space” and “representa-
tional space” in the language of Lefebvre. 
The experience of a landscape (played out 
here using the example of mountains) and 
the cultural processing of this experience 
in literary texts offers Dawn Hollis the op-
portunity to demonstrate very convincing-
ly the relationships between very different 
types of space-making. With the heading 
“Maritoriality”, Michael Talbot first points 
out that territory naturally also means wa-
ter surfaces, moving on to concentrate on 
the transformation of space into territory 
and thus on the making of territory, which 
means (following Charles Maier’s interven-
tions into the field) sovereign control over 
people and infrastructures and should by 
no means be reified as given space. Using 
an example from the Ottoman Empire in 
the late eighteenth century, Talbot shows 
how incomplete territorialization process-
es often were and still are today. This is fol-
lowed by chapters on regional imaginaries 
(in which the fluidity of the term region is 
not problematized in detail, but is never-
theless chosen as a starting point for the 
contested character of regional imaginar-
ies), on economic geographies (in the field 
of tension between cultural interpretations 
of the economic and its analysis of the 
basis of “hard facts”, which can easily be 
cartographically included into large data 
collections), and on digital mapping. They 
all follow the central message of this guide 
to spatial history: spaces are made, and this 
making happens in competition between 
different actors and results in different vi-
sualisations and other cultural artefacts.
The volume concludes with a concise (al-
though unfortunately, as is common on 
the Anglo-Saxon market, largely limited to 
English-language publications) but none-
theless very useful bibliography that will 
encourage further reading.
One can only hope that this volume will 
be widely used in academic teaching so 
that the innovation of spatial history is 
firmly anchored in the history curriculum 
as soon as possible and no longer has to be 
distilled from the offerings of neighbour-
ing disciplines.
Note
1 R. White, What is Spatial History (Stanford Uni-
versity: Spatial History Project), Stanford 2007.


Konrad Lawson/Riccardo Bavaj/ Bernhard Struck (eds.): A Guide to Spatial History: Areas, Aspects, and Avenues of Research, Abingdon/ New York: Routledge, 2022, 308 pp.

Sonyem, Alain Belmond

368 | Rezensionen | Reviews
Matthias Böckmann / Matthias 
Gockel / Reinhart Kößler / Henning 
Melber (Hrsg.): Jenseits von Mbembe: 
Geschichte, Erinnerung, Solidarität, 
Berlin; Metropol Verlag, 2022, 358 S.
Rezensiert von
Alain Belmond Sonyem, Leipzig
Achille Mbembe ist kamerunischer Univer-
sitätsprofessor, der aktuell an der Witwa-
tersrand-Universität Johannesburg tätig ist. 
Als Wissenschaftler bewegt er sich zwischen 
verschiedenen Disziplinen: Geschichtswis-
senschaft, Politikwissenschaft, Soziologie, 
Philosophie, Postkolonialismus, etc. Seine 
wissenschaftlichen Werke, die original zu-
meist in französischer Sprache vorgelegt 
wurden, sind inzwischen in mehr als zehn 
Sprachen übersetzt, darunter vier Bücher in 
deutscher Sprache. Dafür erhielt Mbem-
be fünf Auszeichnungen, darunter vier in 
Deutschland, wo seine Anerkennung sich 
auch durch wiederholte Einladungen zu 
Podiumsgesprächen, Vorträgen und Gast-
vorlesungen nachweisen lässt. Soweit ist al-
les gut für den Intellektuellen gelaufen, bis 
er dazu eingeladen wurde, die Eröffnungs-
rede zur Ruhrtriennale am 14. August 2020 
zum Thema „planetarische Solidarität“ zu 
halten. Plötzlich wurde Mbembe mit Ver-
weis auf einige seiner Schriften Antisemitis-
mus, Holocaust-Relativierung, Unterstüt-
zung der Pro-Palästina-BDS-Bewegung, 
„Dämonisierung“ Israels vorgeworfen und 
seine Ausladung ausdrücklich gefordert. 
Mit der Absage der Triennale Ende April 
2020 aufgrund der unerwartet heftig wü-
tenden COVID-19-Pandemie schien das 
Problem vorerst gelöst. Von Interesse blieb 
und bleibt jedoch die heftige Kontroverse, 
die rund um Mbembe entstand und als 
„Causa Mbembe“ nicht nur in den Medien, 
sondern auch im wissenschaftlichen Milieu 
stattfand. Der vorliegende Sammelband 
soll als Erweiterung bzw. Vertiefung der 
Debatte gelesen werden. Folgende Fragen 
werden von 21 Fachpersonen aus verschie-
denen Gebieten fachlich, sachlich, gründ-
lich und mit sorgfältiger Pointierung beant-
wortet: Wie kam es zur „Causa Mbembe“? 
Wie konnte Mbembe des Antisemitismus 
„bezichtigt“ werden? Was ist überhaupt 
Antisemitismus? Ist der Holocaust mit 
anderen Massenverbrechen vergleichbar? 
Wie wird eigentlich mit Gewaltgeschichte 
umgegangen bzw. soll damit umgegangen 
werden? Inwiefern erscheint die „Causa 
Mbembe“ als neuer „Historikerstreit“? Hat 
Deutschland ein Problem mit der „Erinne-
rung“ und woran wäre das festzumachen? 
Wie kann schließlich „internationale Soli-
darität“ gefördert werden? 
Der Sammelband „Jenseits von Mbembe“ 
besteht aus vier Teilen und 20 Beiträgen. 
Der erste und der zweite Teil umfassen je-
weils vier Beiträgen, während der dritte und 
der vierte Teil aus je sechs Beiträgen beste-
hen. Obwohl die Beiträge nicht den glei-
chen Umfang haben, ist ihre thematische 
Gruppierung unter vier höchst relevanten 
Überschriften von großer Wichtigkeit für 
die Lesbarkeit und für das Verständnis 
des Ganzen: „Die ‚Causa Mbembe‘“ (ein 
Aufklärungsversuch des Vorfalls), „Politik, 
Pädagogik und Antisemitismus“ (Ausei-
nandersetzungen mit dem Antisemitismus-
Begriff bzw. dem Antisemitismusstreit), 
„Über den Umgang mit Gewaltgeschichte“ 
(Holocaust, Kolonialismus, Opferfrage, 
Erinnerungsproblematik), „Gedächtnis-
Rezensionen | Reviews | 369
lücken“ (über die DDR, koloniale Front-
soldaten, Mischlinge). Eine dreizehnseitige 
Einleitung der vier Herausgeber:innen 
vermittelt einen klaren Überblick über 
die einzelnen Teile und die verschiedenen 
Beiträge, die alle „zu einer Neuausrichtung 
der Debatte über deutsche Erinnerungspo-
litik“ führen wollen.
Inhaltlich lässt sich das Buch in zwei 
Schwerpunkte umstrukturieren: Die 
Mbembe-Debatte und der Umgang mit 
Gewaltgeschichte. Ausführlich wird er-
klärt, wie es zur Debatte kam. Nachdem 
die Intendantin der Ruhr-Triennale, Stefa-
nie Carp, Mbembe eingeladen hatte, nahm 
der FDP-Abgeordnete Lorenz Deutsch 
Bezug auf drei Passagen seines Buchs „Po-
litik der Feindschaft“, um ihm die „Dele-
gitimierung“ und die „Dämonisierung“ 
des Staates Israel und die „Holocaust-Re-
lativierung“ sowie den „BDS-Aktivismus“ 
und die „Unterzeichnung eines BDS-Auf-
rufs“ vorzuwerfen. Der Antisemitismusbe-
auftragte der Bundesregierung, Felix Klein, 
hat weiterhin Bezug auf Aussagen Deutschs 
genommen, um Mbembes Auftritt als eine 
„Gefahr für das Land“ zu betrachten. Die-
se Haltung wurde in bestimmten Medi-
en weiter vertreten, wobei nicht nur die 
Ausladung Mbembes, sondern auch die 
Entlassung Carps gefordert wurde. Betont 
wird, wie Mbembe dabei diffamiert wer-
den konnte. Unter anderem wurde er als 
„törichter Intellektueller“, als „Holocaust-
relativierer und Israelhasser“ bezeichnet, 
Carp ihrerseits als „moderne Antisemitin“ 
und „persona non grata“. Interessanterwei-
se legt das Buch dar, wie Mbembe selbst 
auf die Vorwürfe reagierte. Es heißt, er 
kritisiere zwar den Antisemitismus, den 
Kolonialismus, den Rassismus und andere 
Formen von Diskriminierung sowie andere 
historische Formen der Entmenschlichung 
und gehe vergleichend vor, aber das habe 
nichts mit der Leugnung bzw. Relativie-
rung des Holocausts zu tun. Weiterhin 
kritisiere er zwar die Enteignung und De-
mütigung von Palästinenser:innen in Gaza, 
aber er habe nichts mit dem BDS zu tun. 
Vielmehr versuche er darüber aufzuklären, 
„wie unsere moderne Welt wurde, was sie 
heute ist, und wie wir sie gemeinsam re-
parieren können“. Diese Aussagen bieten 
einen Anlass für bestimmte Autor:innen, 
das Werk Mbembes und seine Grundideen 
darzustellen und den Intellektuellen zu re-
habilitieren. So informiert der Band über 
seine Grundthesen: Der Afropolitanismus 
als „Projekt einer Neubegründung eines 
planetarischen Universalismus“, die Idee 
der „Postkolonie“, in der das subalterne 
Subjekt das Sagen hat, die Philosophie des 
universalistischen Humanismus, etc. Es 
gehe bei Mbembe nicht um Eigenschaften 
bestimmter Menschengruppen, sondern 
um die ideengeschichtliche Problematik 
westlich-europäischen Denkens. Mit Hilfe 
dieser Werkexegese stellt sich heraus, dass 
Mbembe laienhaft übersetzt, fehlinterpre-
tiert und missverstanden wird, wenn er 
von den Juden und von Israel berichtet. 
Habe er bei seiner Israelreise „sein Thema“ 
gefunden, wie behauptet wird, so handelt 
es sich um seine Auseinandersetzung mit 
dem „Universalismus“. Angesichts der 
Auslassungen und Lücken bei der Beur-
teilung Mbembes durch seine Kritiker 
schlussfolgern die Herausgeber:innen, dass 
die Diffamierung Mbembes einen Angriff 
auf die postkoloniale Theorie darstelle und 
rassistisch fundiert sei. Es gehe um eine 
„Schmutzkampagne“, für die der Kampf 
gegen Antisemitismus missbraucht werde, 
um „eine weltweit anerkannte antikoloni-
370 | Rezensionen | Reviews
ale Stimme aus Afrika auszuschalten“. Das 
offenbare den „deutschen Katechismus“ 
und einen „Rückzug aus der globalen Erin-
nerungskultur in die Provinzialität“.
Zur Frage, wie mit Antisemitismus bzw. 
mit Gewaltgeschichte in Deutschland um-
gegangen wird, lassen sich aus dem Buch 
zwei Tendenzen herausarbeiten: Der Anti-
semitismusstreit bzw. der Historikerstreit 
und die Erinnerungslücken. Erik Petry geht 
auf die Geschichte des Antisemitismus ein 
und spannt den Bogen vom Berliner Anti-
semitismusstreit von 1879 bis hin zu den 
heutigen Drei Ds (Doppelter Standard, Dä-
monisierung und Delegitimierung) beim 
Umgang mit Israel. Das Besondere beim 
Antisemitismus sei die „Vernichtungsfan-
tasie“. Die Juden erscheinen dabei als „bei-
spielhafte Opfer“, etwas quasi Irrationales 
im Gegensatz zu den kolonialen Völker-
morden, denen eine gewisse „Rationalität“ 
nicht abzusprechen sei. Die Juden wurden 
so zu Opfern einer „illiberalen permanenten 
Sicherheit“ im Gegensatz zur kolonialen Zi-
vilisierungsmission, die eine Form liberaler 
permanenter Sicherheit gewesen sei. Zum 
Antisemitismusstreit weist Hanno Loewy 
darauf hin, dass die Bekämpfung des Anti-
semitismus meistens politisch instrumenta-
lisiert wurde. Dabei sei sowohl ein innerjü-
discher als auch ein innerisraelischer Streit 
festzustellen, in denen auch ethno-nationa-
listische und rassistische Motive formuliert 
würden. Man befinde sich letzten Endes 
nur in einer ausweglosen Spirale der Gewalt 
und Nichtanerkennung des Anderen. Susan 
Neiman bezeichnet die vorliegende Debat-
te als „Historikerstreit 2.0“ und fragt, ob es 
falsch oder antisemitisch sei, den Holocaust 
mit anderen Verbrechen zu vergleichen. Da-
raus ergibt sich ein Plädoyer für das Zusam-
mendenken von Antisemitismus und an-
deren Formen von Rassismus, wobei nicht 
die Singularität, sondern die Universalität 
des Holocaust betont wird. Für universa-
listische Juden müsse es möglich sein, ras-
sistische, koloniale Verbrechen anzuerken-
nen, ohne zu befürchten, man trivialisiere 
die Verbrechen gegen die Juden.
Was die Erinnerungsproblematik angeht, geht 
das Buch ausführlich auf bestimmte Themen 
ein, die in Deutschland oftmals tabuisiert wer-
den: die Verdrängung des Wissens über Palä-
stina, das historische Gedächtnis der DDR, 
der Beitrag von Afrikanern zum Sieg über 
den Nationalsozialismus, die Vorstellung von 
„Mischlingen“ in Deutschland in der ersten 
Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts und die „Ver-
harmlosung des deutschen Kolonialismus“.
„Jenseits von Mbembe“ wirft nicht nur Fragen 
auf, sondern bietet auch einige Lösungsansät-
ze zu den Problematiken des Antisemitismus, 
des Provinzialismus bzw. Katechismus und 
der Erinnerungsdefizite. Mit der „kritischen 
Relativierung“ und dem „radikalen Neben-
einanderstellen“ könnte, so Jie-Hyun Lim, 
sowohl die „mnemonische Provinzialität“ 
überwunden als auch ein „multidirektionales 
Erinnern“ eingeleitet werden. Als Rezepte für 
die pädagogische Auseinandersetzung mit 
dem Antisemitismus werden unter anderen 
das Zusammendenken von Antisemitismus 
und Rassismus, die Verweigerung von Po-
larisierungen, die Dekonstruktion von Ge-
schichtsbildern und historischen Diskursen 
sowie die Förderung der Selbstreflexion ge-
nannt. Für den gesellschaftlichen Zusam-
menhalt ist es lohnenswert, von Konkurrenz 
zu Solidarität beim Vergleichen unterschied-
licher Verbrechen gegen die Menschheit über-
zugehen und die „internationale Solidarität“ 
zu fördern. So könnte das Fazit dieses höchst 
lesenswerten und absolut empfehlenswerten 
Buchs lauten.


Matthias Böckmann/Matthias Gockel/Reinhart Kößler/Henning Melber (Hrsg.): Jenseits von Mbembe: Geschichte, Erinnerung, Solidarität, Berlin; Metropol Verlag, 2022, 358 S.

Christoph, Lena C.

Schulte-Werning, Julia

Conference Report: “Worlds Apart? Futures of Global History”

Gülzau, Fabian

Mau, Steffen

Walls, Barriers, Checkpoints, No-man’s-land. A Typology of Border Infrastructure on the African Continent

Blaser, Claire Louise

Ligtenberg, Monique

Selander, Josephine

Introduction: Transimperial Webs of Knowledge at the Margins of Imperial Europe*

Editorial
Some imagine the world as consisting only of sovereign nation states defined by mem-
bership in the United Nations. This idea also feeds the interest in transnational histories, 
which share the interest in border-crossing flows with other approaches in global history, 
but at the same time contribute to the fact that the spatial format of the sovereign nation 
state retains its central position in the imaginings of globally effective spatial orders. A 
glance at the contemporary world alone makes it abundantly clear that at most only a 
part of the spatial configurations is represented by this imagination, and a glance at their 
history makes the picture even more complex.
The term transregional studies has been used in an attempt to better address the com-
plexity of the situation, in that the transnational plays an important role, but can by no 
means capture the totality of border-crossing processes. 
This thematic issue of Comparativ approaches the challenges transnational studies are 
confronted with in three very interesting ways. First, it looks at the Ottoman Empire, 
an imperial construction that was transformed into a nation state without imperial am-
bitions, encroachments, and expansions only relatively late in its history (and still not 
completely… when only thinking of the Kurdish question or the engagement of cur-
rent Turkey in Syria). Second, it is about the co-constitution of this empire through its 
manifold contacts in and to other parts of Europe (and of course far beyond). Third, in 
order to be able to grasp these transregional contacts, encounters, exchange processes, 
cultural transfers, perceptions, and appropriations, the authors take a broader view and 
do not orientate themselves on the borders of countries such as Germany, Austria, and 
Switzerland (even in the period under study anything but fully territorialised nation-
states!), but rather group them together as a kind of cultural space defined primarily by 
language: the Germansphere. 
This extremely fruitful approach creates an exciting perspective, which is demonstrated 
in the individual articles, but it should also be appreciated in its methodological fruitful-
ness, because such a model can easily be transferred to other world regions. The hybrid 
political spatial format of the nation-state cum empire is not limited to the British and 
French case in the nineteenth century but can be observed wherever old imperial and 
colonial ambitions are revived. This format is not only reminiscent of the imperial past 
Comparativ | Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung 32 (2022) Heft 3/4, S. 321–322.
322 | Editorial
of state-building processes, but also of the unfinished nature of territorialisation, if one 
understands the latter (with Charles S. Maier) as the complete focus on definitive border 
formation, as the opening up of territory through technical as well as social infrastruc-
tures, and as the control over the population of the territory enclosed by these borders.
On the other hand, there is a type of spatial configuration that is oriented towards lan-
guage, cultural belonging, and many related processes of identification. The repertoire 
thus proclaimed has also long played a major role in processes of inclusion and exclusion, 
but also, as this issue excellently demonstrates, in the organisation and communication 
of encounters.
In this respect, this issue is an invitation to get to know the relations between the Otto-
man Empire and the Germansphere in the diversity of examples, which have hitherto 
hardly been considered together, but also to make productive use of the methodological 
expansion of transregional studies.
Matthias Middell / Katja Castryck-Naumann


Editorial

Köse, Yavuz

“Vienna is a Treasure to Us”: Vienna and the Austro-Hungarian Empire as Role Models for the Late Ottoman Empire

Coghe, Samuël

REZENSIONEN | REVIEWS
Martha Chaiklin / Philip Gooding / 
Gwyn Campbell (eds.): Animal Trade 
Histories in the Indian Ocean World, 
Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020,  
324 pp. 
Reviewed by 
Samuël Coghe, Berlin
Despite the “animal turn” of the last dec-
ades, book-length historical studies on 
animals and animal products in the Indian 
Ocean world (IOW) are still rare. This is all 
the more surprising since economic history 
has been at the heart of the very concept of 
the IOW.[1] Commonly defined as “a mac-
ro-region that stretches from southern and 
eastern Africa, through the Middle East, 
South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia 
and Australasia” that was affected by “the 
Indian Ocean monsoon system of winds, 
currents and rains” (p. 2), the IOW is often 
considered by its proponents to have been 
“home to the first ‘global’ economy” as a re-
sult of intensifying long-distance exchanges 
of commodities, ideas, and people between 
the tenth and nineteenth centuries.[2] 
However, historians have focused much 
more on commodities that were traded 
between the IOW and “the West”, such as 
spices, tea, or precious metals than on ani-
mals, which were mainly (though not ex-
clusively) traded within the IOW. 
Building on a conference at the Indian 
Ocean World Centre (directed by coeditor 
Gwyn Campbell) at McGill University in 
2014, Animal Trade Histories in the In-
dian Ocean World sets out to recognize 
the importance of animals and animal 
commodities in economic and cultural life 
throughout the IOW. Bringing together 
contributions from both junior and sen-
ior scholars in the field, the edited volume 
paints a fascinating tableau of the trade 
with and the use of a wide range of ani-
mals and animal products within the IOW 
between the sixteenth and nineteenth cen-
turies. Among other things, we learn about 
pearl and chank fishing in Southern India 
and Sri Lanka under the Dutch East In-
dia Company (VOC) and the British East 
India Company (EIC), the importance of 
horses for state power in the Southern Red 
Sea Region, the economic uses of and cul-
tural taboos regarding donkeys throughout 
the IOW, the seventeenth-century export 
of deerskins from Ayutthaya and Taiwan to 
Japan, or changing patterns of local ivory 
consumption in East Africa. While the 
numbers of animals, commodities, places, 
and groups of (human) agents are impres-
sive, the volume is nevertheless quite coher-
ent, as the chapters speak to each other in 
several ways. 
478 | Rezensionen | Reviews
At least three common threads can be iden-
tified. First, most contributions focus on 
how the production, shipping, and use of 
animals and animal products was partly 
transformed under the impact of increasing 
European involvement in the IOW trade 
since the sixteenth century. Accordingly, 
many chapters deal with European trading 
companies such as the VOC and the EIC 
(Winters, Ostroff, Vadlamudi, Sprey/Hall) 
or the nineteenth-century European and 
American trading companies in Madagas-
car (Campbell). Yet, going against Eurocen-
tric tendencies, authors consistently high-
light how European influence and power 
were constrained by local political decision-
makers and traders, such as Tamil Muslim 
merchants in Southern India (Vadlamudi), 
or by diasporic trading groups from other 
parts of the IOW, such as Chinese and Jap-
anese traders in the Thai kingdom of Ayut-
thaya (Sprey/Hall), Indian middlemen in 
Madagascar (Campbell), and “Arab” Om-
ani and Rima communities in East Africa 
(Gooding). 
Second, many contributions convincingly 
address the shifting utilitarian and symbol-
ic uses of animals or animal commodities. 
Serels, for instance, shows how horses in the 
Southern Red Sea Region were long used 
to project military and political power until 
better rifles in the twentieth century caused 
the demise of the cavalry and turned horses 
mainly into a mere status symbol. Chaiklin, 
for her part, argues that peacock feathers, 
once a luxury product for elite (military) 
use, became widely available in Japan from 
the mid-nineteenth century onwards. The 
new economic uses that emerged (such as 
fans) even turned this exotic commodity 
into a symbol of Japanese culture viewed 
from abroad. As Gooding shows, the shift 
from mass to luxury commodity also oc-
curred in the other sense: due to rising 
global demand for ivory in the late nine-
teenth century, its formerly ubiquitous use 
in East Africa was increasingly restricted 
to elite groups. Various chapters (such as 
those by Winters and Chaiklin) also draw 
out how both living (exotic) animals and 
their commodities were often used as dip-
lomatic gifts by royal houses and trading 
companies.
Third, in line with the strong environmen-
tal history stance of newer IOW studies,[3] 
many contributions show how ecological 
conditions and variations underwrote the 
“production” of and trade with animals and 
animal commodities. While pearl oysters 
and chanks only thrived in certain IOW wa-
ters, horses, donkeys, and cattle were bred 
more easily in particular climes and disease 
environments and subsequently moved 
“from surplus to deficit zones” (Clarence-
Smith, p. 148). Others emphasize the eco-
logical destruction wrought by increasing 
trade, such as the near extinction of deer in 
Taiwan through overhunting (Sprey/Hall), 
the extinction of “indigenous” birds on 
Mauritius through deforestation, the intro-
duction of “exogenous” animals (Winters), 
or the constant fears of pearl oyster over-
fishing (Ostroff).
The major strength of the book hence re-
sides in how, through a range of detailed 
case studies with a remarkable geographi-
cal and interspecies scope, it manages to 
intertwine economic, political, cultural, 
and environmental history. The book dem-
onstrates not only how animals and ani-
mal commodities were crucial in all these 
realms in the IOW but also how they can 
serve as a lens to observe broader historical 
structures and processes.
Rezensionen | Reviews | 479
However, the editors and authors could 
have pushed the analytical takeaway of the 
volume even further. First, by concentrat-
ing almost exclusively on intra-IOW trade 
until the nineteenth century, the volume 
makes a strong and valuable argument for 
the economic and cultural resilience of lo-
cal producers, traders, and consumers in 
the face of European intrusion during the 
heyday of the IOW. Yet, it is a pity that, 
although a few chapters (rather briefly) 
touch upon ulterior developments, the 
editors do not more systematically test this 
revisionist argument for the long twentieth 
century. To what extent did territorialized 
(European, Japanese, or American) colo-
nialism in the twentieth century reshape 
the contours of animal trades, merchant 
communities, and commodity uses in the 
region? Second, Chaiklin and Gooding in 
the volume’s introduction open up an in-
teresting debate about the (non-)applica-
bility of the environmental history concept 
of the Capitalocene to the IOW.[4] While 
they base their rejection on the continuous 
agency and resilience of IOW actors and 
networks (against “Western” capitalists), 
this argument is not taken up by the contri-
butions and also seems to stand in contra-
diction to the extinction narratives in some 
of the chapters (mentioned above), which 
all seem to go back to “Western” capitalist 
action. Finally, the contributors could have 
engaged with global commodity history 
more broadly to tease out the implications 
of their mainly intra-IOW stories for ana-
lytical concepts such as “global commodity 
chains” and “commodity frontiers”.[5]
These remarks, which are mainly demands 
for further analysis, should not ignore the 
major strengths of the volume. Animal 
Trade Histories in the Indian Ocean World 
not only greatly enhances our knowledge 
of the trade with and use of animals and 
animal commodities, but also highlights, 
by using this prism, the interconnectivity, 
shifting agency, and resilience of polities 
and trading communities across the IOW 
in an era of increasing European influence.
Notes
1 See, for instance, K. N. Chaudhuri: Asia be-
fore Europe. Economy and Civilisation of the 
Indian Ocean from the Rise of Islam to 1750, 
Cambridge 1990; M. Pearson (ed.), Trade, Cir-
culation and Flow in the Indian Ocean World, 
Houndmills 2015.
2 See the mission statement of the Indian Ocean 
World Centre at McGill University: <https://
indianoceanworldcentre.com/welcome/our-mis-
sion/> (last accessed 23 May 2022).
3 See, for instance, G. Campbell, Africa and the 
Indian Ocean World from Early Times to circa 
1900, Cambridge 2019.
4 See also J. W. Moore (ed.), Anthropocene or 
Capitalocene?: Nature, History, and the Crisis of 
Capitalism, Oakland 2016.
5 G. Gereffi / M. Korzeniewicz (eds.), Commodity 
Chains and Global Capitalism, Westport 1994; 
S. Beckert / U. Bosma / M. Schneider / E. Van-
haute, Commodity Frontiers and the Transfor-
mation of the Global Countryside. A Research 
Agenda, in: Journal of Global History 16 (2021) 
3, pp. 435–450.


Martha Chaiklin / Philip Gooding / Gwyn Campbell (eds.): Animal Trade Histories in the Indian Ocean World, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, 324 pp.

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