Decolonial Gazing and Hermeneutic Resistance: Black German Challenges to White German Cultural Hegemony in the Museum

Abstract

In this article, I highlight the ways that Black Europeans challenge universalizing notions of cultural heritage to emphasize decolonial possibilities. Focusing on the German context, I show how Black artists, intellectuals and activists interrogate the collection, display and spectatorship of museum objects in majority-white contexts using the strategies of decolonial gazing and hermeneutic resistance. I use the Berlin Ethnological Museum in its former and current iterations as a representative example of debates about collecting and looking at museums, showing how scholars like Fatima El-Tayeb and initiatives like No Humboldt21! challenge universalizing discourses and reflect the gaze back on whiteness. Finally, I offer a reading of a literary challenge to white hegemony within and beyond the museum in Sharon Dodua Otoo’s 2021 novel Adas Raum [Ada’s Realm].