The Affect and Colonialism Podcast: Recent Episodes
Affect and Colonialism Web Lab
Colonialism is not only a thing of the past. It affects people all over the world, in the north and the south of our globe, every day. Colonialism can be many things: a structure of power, inequality, violence - but also a structure of feeling. In exciting conversations with academics, artists, journalists, and activists, we shed a critical light on colonialism's affective lives and afterlives. Together with them, we discuss the urgent struggles of our time and the different visions of how to decolonize our present. Find out more on our website: https://affect-and-colonialism.net
In recent years, international agencies such as the World Bank have begun to fund parenting interventions to improve young children’s brain development in Global South countries. But who decides on the standards for good parenting? And what are the consequences to argue that poverty is based on poorly developed brains? In this episode, we talk with anthropologist Gabriel Scheidecker about the colonial undercurrents of early childhood interventions.
The hegemony of the bourgeoisie, its culture and its values, is a central feature of our colonial and capitalist present. But what does it feel like to be a bourgeois subject and what structures of feeling enable the dominant class of the colonial world order to function? Today, we talk with philosopher and critical theorist Henrike Kohpeiß about the colonial lives of bourgeois coldness.
On January 8, 2023, after Jair Bolsonaro had lost Brazil’s presidential election, hundreds of his supporters stormed the capital to oust the new president, Luis Inácio Lula da Silva. This dramatic event manifested fierce conflicts over the country’s political future. Today, we talk with journalist and communication studies scholar Débora Medeiros about contesting colonial affects in Brazilian politics.
Our global economy is fundamentally governed by colonial logics. The resulting power inequalities, ecological destructions, and social corrosions severely impact the daily lives of people. They transform the way they feel about themselves, about others and about the world around them. Today, we talk with artist and writer Bassem Saad about the affective lives of colonial economies.
It is more and more evident that the world faces an urgent environmental crisis. Global economies, based on colonial imaginaries of progress through resource extraction, have severely damaged the planet. But not everybody is equally affected. The ecological catastrophe further marginalizes people along racial lines. Today, we talk with anthropologist Tamar Blickstein about the colonial affects of environmental racism.
In the large cities of Europe, millions of people live as first-generation migrants — many of them from the Global South. Often, they are expected to make an effort to belong and develop a strong attachment to their new home. But what if their experience of belonging does not conform to the ideal of integration? Today, we talk with anthropologist and writer Omar Kasmani about migration and the feeling of thinness in the European metropolis.
It is seen as one of the great achievements of European modernity to have cast out revenge from law and politics. The colonial narrative says: where revenge rules, and thus affect, modernity is absent. But is revenge actually outside of modernity or is it rather one of its blind spots? Today, we talk with philosopher Fabian Bernhard about the place of revenge in colonial modernity.
Es gilt als eine zentrale moderne Errungenschaft, die Rache aus Politik und Recht verbannt zu haben. Die koloniale Erzählung besagt: wo die Rache regiert und damit der Affekt, da ist die Moderne nicht angekommen. Doch steht die Rache wirklich außerhalb der Moderne oder ist sie eher ihr blinder Fleck? Heute sprechen wir mit dem Philosophen Fabian Bernhard über die Gegenwart der Rache in der kolonialen Moderne.
Although European societies promise religious freedom, non-Christians remain subject to considerable discrimination. In this context, it is mostly taken for granted that there is a basic conflict between the modern secular state and the passions of religion. But what about the passions of the secular? Today, we talk with sociologist Nur Yasemin Ural about the colonial affects of secular Europe.
Suicide attacks, in which fighters are willing to sacrifice their own life to commit an act of violence, have a long political history. More recently, they are increasingly embedded in the elaborate production of images, including video testimonies in which the attackers present themselves as martyrs and explain their political goals. Today, we talk with art historian Verena Straub about the visual politics of affect in suicide attacks.
Over many years, Europeans have taken cultural artifacts from the colonies to European museums. Recently, many passionately struggle to give these objects back to their former owners. But this goes far beyond a simple property dispute. Rather, what is at stake here is how to decolonize property and knowledge production itself. Today, we talk with anthropologist Laibor Kalanga Moko about the affects of colonial collections.
Since their inception as an artform, films have been structured by a colonial way of seeing. Specific arrangements and depictions of bodies reproduce colonial fantasies of the other of Europe. Recently, more and more visual artists explore alternative aesthetics that resist the colonial gaze. Today, we talk with filmmaker Arjunraj about the practices and affects of decolonial filmmaking.
Since Jair Bolsonaro has become president of Brazil, old sentiments of white supremacy are on the rise. To articulate their protest, indigenous and black movements experiment with new forms of media communication. In essence, Brazil’s political discourse remains divided along colonial lines. Today, we talk with communication studies scholar Débora Medeiros about the affective politics of media in Bolsonaro Brazil.