This spring, the House of European History – a flagship museum of the European Parliament – has opened a temporary exhibition under the title Postcolonial? that features unique artworks, historical objects, and personal stories.
Knowing the multifaceted and controversial legacies of European colonialism and being aware of just how closely intertwined the European integration project and the history of decolonization have been, this amounts to a significant and urgent intervention. The exhibition asks explicitly how Europeans preserved their power as their empires collapsed and aims to show how the “colonial matrix of power” continues to shape the world we live in. The exhibition ultimately ambitions no less than to help us rethink what it means to be European – and thus raises a host of essential and challenging questions.
Our podcast features two of the exhibition’s main curators – Kieran Burns and Ayoko Mensah – and two eminent experts in colonial history, postcolonial theory, and questions of European and postcolonial memory – Diana Natermann and Aline Sierp. Moderated by Ferenc Laczó, they jointly examine this crucial new exhibition in depth – and consider what it means to have such an exhibition at the heart of the EU today.
The first part of the podcast explored some of the most thought-provoking parts of the exhibition.
This second part focuses on the links between the main themes of the exhibition and the history of European integration; asks whether there might be a risk here of offering a dichotomous and too moralizing reading of history; and considers what a thorough rethinking in the light of colonial history of how to be European today would imply – and what might be most in need of revision in the House of European History itself in accordance with that process of rethinking.
The interview was conducted by Ferenc Laczó. Alina Young edited the audio file.
Cover image: “Raft Of Medusa”, 2016, © Alexis Peskine
