Austria’s post-colonial present: Missing memorialization of colonial violence

ABSTRACT

This article situates Austria in wider discussions around the repercussions of colonial violence on a global scale. It focusses on the ways in which anthropological disciplines fashioned specific ideas of racial and ethnographic belonging both within and outside the Austrian-Hungarian empire. Understanding how Austrian knowledge production relied on and participated in colonial expropriation sheds light on the significance of the post-colonial for a nation that did not establish formal colonial rule overseas. The unearthing of the mortal remains of people and other forms of colonial exploitation such as geological extraction were deeply intertwined; they were often conducted within the very same expedition. These processes of colonial dispossession continue to be operative today. Anthropological and other ‘collections’ from colonial contexts that are housed in European institutions speak to the currency of these issues. This paper argues that different conceptions of time – of the relation between past and present – complicate ongoing negotiations of the meaning of Austria’s colonial history.

KEYWORDS:

• colonialism
• Austria
• anthropology
• post-colonial studies
• museum and academic collections
• time

Acknowledgements

Parts of this paper are based on Sophie Schasiepen: Southern African human remains as property: physical anthropology and the production of racial capital in Austria (unpublished PhD Thesis, University of the Western Cape, 2021), which was supported by funding from the Remaking Societies, Remaking Persons Supranational Forum (funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation), the International Research Centre Cultural Studies Vienna (IFK), and the Marietta Blau scholarship from the Austrian agency for international mobility and cooperation in education, science and research (OeAD). I thank the reviewers and especially the editors of this special issue for their comments and suggestions, and in particular for their exceptionally kind communication.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 These include, among others, M-Media, an association for the advancement of intercultural media relations; maiz, an independent organisation by and for migrant women; Schwarze Frauen Community; Afro Rainbow Austria; Black Voices Volksbegehren; the collective Trenza (for a timeline see Caceres, Mesquita, and Utikal 2017).