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Papers by Damani Partridge

Identities-global Studies in Culture and Power, May 13, 2009

This article examines the ways in which travel serves as an analytic to understand citizenship an... more This article examines the ways in which travel serves as an analytic to understand citizenship and the production of noncitizens after the Berlin Wall. This production is linked to a shift in the post-Wall German and European discourses and practices of asylum, which are significantly renegotiated and restricted shortly after the Wall falls. It is not only the law that changes, but also the mobility of the subjects perceived not to belong. The production of non-citizens is also related to official and unofficial articulations that attach Germanness to "Whiteness." "Black" subjects must not only negotiate their citizenship via real histories of mobility and displacement but also because their skin itself signifies travel and adventure. In the end, I write about the space that this imagination of travel and adventure through "Black" bodies both opens up and closes off for a politics based on "Blackness." I turn from normative accounts to the voices and bodies of "Black" subjects themselves.

De Gruyter eBooks, Sep 5, 2022

German Studies Review, May 1, 2022

Cultural Anthropology, Nov 1, 2008

The comments, critiques, and editing of two anonymous reviewers as well Ann Anagnost and, most re... more The comments, critiques, and editing of two anonymous reviewers as well Ann Anagnost and, most recently, Kim and Mike Fortun have been tremendously helpful. Finally, thank you to Wolfgang Kaschuba at the Institut für Europäische Ethnologie in Berlin for providing research support and office space, to all of those friends and family who offered support and guidance, and to all of the people in Germany who were willing to participate in my research.

Comparative Studies in Society and History, Apr 1, 2005

Creating Germans Abroad is clearly inspired by the work of Benedict Anderson (1983) and written i... more Creating Germans Abroad is clearly inspired by the work of Benedict Anderson (1983) and written in the spirit of the work of Ann Stoler (1995; 2002). In this work, Walther suggests the idealization of the possibility of a German homeland outside of the European territory in colonial Southwest Africa. The emphasis on agriculture, climate, and landscape countered the increasing push towards industrialization in the Fatherland. Here, there was not just a nostalgic longing for an imagined German past that is pastoral as opposed to industrial (a longing used and manipulated by Nazi ideologues), but an actual place where the idealized Heimat (homeland) could be realized in practice. The problem, however, became the presence of so many non-Germans, in this case not only "Black" Africans, but also "White" Afrikaners. In this sense, an appropriate title for the book might also be "Creating Germany Abroad." Throughout the work, Walther uses archival evidence to establish the ways in which Germany and Germans were produced in colonial Southwest Africa, from German Colonial Rule through Namibian independence in 1990. From land appropriation, to mass murder of "Black" Africans, to the building and centralized administration of German-language schools; from the early importation of "respectable" German women, to an emphasis on the right kind of German settler, Walther traces the ways in which not "Whiteness," but Germanness became central to the creation of Southwest Germans in their transition towards becoming German Southwesterners. Insights such as German Southwestern support for Namibian independence reveal the intensity of feeling for ideologies of nation over race. However, as Walther's account suggests, one should not lose sight of the relationship between events in Southwest Africa and those in Europe, such as the end of World War I, when Germany officially lost control of its colonies, and the beginnings of World War II, when the possibilities of dual citizenship for Germans in Southwest Africa were officially banned, and the ruling South Africans began to see the Nazi party as a threat to "White" solidarity and local governance. In this account, it becomes clear that both the classroom and the pulpit were critical sites of German citizenship production-here, citizenship should be understood in the broadest sense, as colonial administrators were interested not only in formal activities such as voting rights and land appropriation, but also in class and respectability, marriage, sex, and reproduction. Of course, these

American Ethnologist, Feb 1, 2012

Anthropologists and Christian missionaries have shared a long history. They travel to similar pla... more Anthropologists and Christian missionaries have shared a long history. They travel to similar places and occupy overlapping stages of the colonial enterprise. They share hardy personalities, indefatigable spirits, and, at times, even lodging. Margaret Meade, like many anthropologists before and afterward, boarded with missionaries during her research in Samoa. In my own work in Botswana, I have often found myself within hearing

University of California Press eBooks, Nov 7, 2022

Hau: The Journal of Ethnographic Theory, Dec 1, 2020

From post-World War II Germany to contemporary contexts beyond Europe and the United States, this... more From post-World War II Germany to contemporary contexts beyond Europe and the United States, this contribution considers the extent to which “Blackness” has become a universal claim. It thinks through this claim in relation to Aihwa Ong’s discussion of invisibilization. In a context in which new immigrants to countries such as the United States or Germany face at best exclusionary incorporation through a process that also appends their potential noncitizenship to Blackness, a reinvigorated Blackness offers a different kind of possibility. Ong’s discussion of ethnic succession in the United States also illuminates the persistence of systemic racism and “White” supremacy, making analytical space for the academic and the activist to consider the possibilities for Blackness as a universal claim.

Central European History

When I first visited Auschwitz, I visited it as an analyst, a cultural anthropologist accompanyin... more When I first visited Auschwitz, I visited it as an analyst, a cultural anthropologist accompanying a group of mostly Turkish, Turkish-German, Palestinian, and Palestinian-German youth participating in a federally and locally sponsored program meant to teach them about German history and to address their own antisemitism.1 I was there as an observer who could not help but be dislodged from my professional role and deeply moved by flakes of bone on the ground, and sites of intimate, state-sponsored murder: a shooting wall where guards killed at close range; the collection and smell of the human hair of the murdered a wheelbarrow used to carry human ashes produced after the gas chamber in crematoria. I was moved also by the tears and horror of these same youth, also traumatized by the remains of state-sponsored mass murder. Although the program that led them to Auschwitz was meant to teach them democracy, I wondered about the extent to which actually existing democracy, using its tool ...

Routledge eBooks, Feb 2, 2023

Anthropological Quarterly

University of California Press eBooks, 2011

Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2021

ABSTRACT This piece centrally engages Alana Lentin’s book, Why Race Still Matters, and thinks abo... more ABSTRACT This piece centrally engages Alana Lentin’s book, Why Race Still Matters, and thinks about it in relation to changing the world. If we undo “race” will we undo racism? Lentin’s charge to undo race raises further questions about this undoing in relation to particular experiences of racism. Along these lines, the piece works through her critique of Afropessimism and thinks through the necessity to take seriously the critique of anti-Black racism as a critical component of imagining a future coalitional politics. Ultimately, one might ask, do we need to undo race in order to undo the world, or do we need to undo the world in order to undo race?

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 2021

With Detroit as its principal site, this essay examines the possibility and the hope for developi... more With Detroit as its principal site, this essay examines the possibility and the hope for developing a decolonial practice as part of the research in and of a “Black” city. What can we learn from Detroit and what needs to change about ethnography in order for this kind of learning to take place? Can ethnography become a decolonial form or must it be undone and re-emerge as a different kind of intervention in order to effectively contribute to a decolonizing practice? Who should be the interlocutors? Who should be the authors? To what extent must we reimagine the audience? How must ethnography’s practitioners reconfigure processes of collaboration in order to effectively change the form?

This bilingual volume (English/German) gives insight into the experiences of the Black Diaspora i... more This bilingual volume (English/German) gives insight into the experiences of the Black Diaspora in Germany and the connections of the international Black Dias­po­ra with Germany. Topics range from the 18th century to the present and from social history to literature, art and popular culture. The book includes chapters on political initiatives, theoretical issues, historical overviews and individual case studies. It offers reflections on the rela­tionships between Black German Studies and Critical Whiteness Studies to hegemonic traditions of knowl­edge production, between racism and nationhood, and between colonial history and later developments. Fur­ther topics include the intersectionality of ‘race’, class and gender; and the position of Black people in cultural production, between commodification, performativity and subversion. Chapters include academic analy­ses from History and Cultural Studies, as well as contribu­tions by and about activists, artists and historical wit­nesses,...

Identities-global Studies in Culture and Power, May 13, 2009

This article examines the ways in which travel serves as an analytic to understand citizenship an... more This article examines the ways in which travel serves as an analytic to understand citizenship and the production of noncitizens after the Berlin Wall. This production is linked to a shift in the post-Wall German and European discourses and practices of asylum, which are significantly renegotiated and restricted shortly after the Wall falls. It is not only the law that changes, but also the mobility of the subjects perceived not to belong. The production of non-citizens is also related to official and unofficial articulations that attach Germanness to "Whiteness." "Black" subjects must not only negotiate their citizenship via real histories of mobility and displacement but also because their skin itself signifies travel and adventure. In the end, I write about the space that this imagination of travel and adventure through "Black" bodies both opens up and closes off for a politics based on "Blackness." I turn from normative accounts to the voices and bodies of "Black" subjects themselves.

De Gruyter eBooks, Sep 5, 2022

German Studies Review, May 1, 2022

Cultural Anthropology, Nov 1, 2008

The comments, critiques, and editing of two anonymous reviewers as well Ann Anagnost and, most re... more The comments, critiques, and editing of two anonymous reviewers as well Ann Anagnost and, most recently, Kim and Mike Fortun have been tremendously helpful. Finally, thank you to Wolfgang Kaschuba at the Institut für Europäische Ethnologie in Berlin for providing research support and office space, to all of those friends and family who offered support and guidance, and to all of the people in Germany who were willing to participate in my research.

Comparative Studies in Society and History, Apr 1, 2005

Creating Germans Abroad is clearly inspired by the work of Benedict Anderson (1983) and written i... more Creating Germans Abroad is clearly inspired by the work of Benedict Anderson (1983) and written in the spirit of the work of Ann Stoler (1995; 2002). In this work, Walther suggests the idealization of the possibility of a German homeland outside of the European territory in colonial Southwest Africa. The emphasis on agriculture, climate, and landscape countered the increasing push towards industrialization in the Fatherland. Here, there was not just a nostalgic longing for an imagined German past that is pastoral as opposed to industrial (a longing used and manipulated by Nazi ideologues), but an actual place where the idealized Heimat (homeland) could be realized in practice. The problem, however, became the presence of so many non-Germans, in this case not only "Black" Africans, but also "White" Afrikaners. In this sense, an appropriate title for the book might also be "Creating Germany Abroad." Throughout the work, Walther uses archival evidence to establish the ways in which Germany and Germans were produced in colonial Southwest Africa, from German Colonial Rule through Namibian independence in 1990. From land appropriation, to mass murder of "Black" Africans, to the building and centralized administration of German-language schools; from the early importation of "respectable" German women, to an emphasis on the right kind of German settler, Walther traces the ways in which not "Whiteness," but Germanness became central to the creation of Southwest Germans in their transition towards becoming German Southwesterners. Insights such as German Southwestern support for Namibian independence reveal the intensity of feeling for ideologies of nation over race. However, as Walther's account suggests, one should not lose sight of the relationship between events in Southwest Africa and those in Europe, such as the end of World War I, when Germany officially lost control of its colonies, and the beginnings of World War II, when the possibilities of dual citizenship for Germans in Southwest Africa were officially banned, and the ruling South Africans began to see the Nazi party as a threat to "White" solidarity and local governance. In this account, it becomes clear that both the classroom and the pulpit were critical sites of German citizenship production-here, citizenship should be understood in the broadest sense, as colonial administrators were interested not only in formal activities such as voting rights and land appropriation, but also in class and respectability, marriage, sex, and reproduction. Of course, these

American Ethnologist, Feb 1, 2012

Anthropologists and Christian missionaries have shared a long history. They travel to similar pla... more Anthropologists and Christian missionaries have shared a long history. They travel to similar places and occupy overlapping stages of the colonial enterprise. They share hardy personalities, indefatigable spirits, and, at times, even lodging. Margaret Meade, like many anthropologists before and afterward, boarded with missionaries during her research in Samoa. In my own work in Botswana, I have often found myself within hearing

University of California Press eBooks, Nov 7, 2022

Hau: The Journal of Ethnographic Theory, Dec 1, 2020

From post-World War II Germany to contemporary contexts beyond Europe and the United States, this... more From post-World War II Germany to contemporary contexts beyond Europe and the United States, this contribution considers the extent to which “Blackness” has become a universal claim. It thinks through this claim in relation to Aihwa Ong’s discussion of invisibilization. In a context in which new immigrants to countries such as the United States or Germany face at best exclusionary incorporation through a process that also appends their potential noncitizenship to Blackness, a reinvigorated Blackness offers a different kind of possibility. Ong’s discussion of ethnic succession in the United States also illuminates the persistence of systemic racism and “White” supremacy, making analytical space for the academic and the activist to consider the possibilities for Blackness as a universal claim.

Central European History

When I first visited Auschwitz, I visited it as an analyst, a cultural anthropologist accompanyin... more When I first visited Auschwitz, I visited it as an analyst, a cultural anthropologist accompanying a group of mostly Turkish, Turkish-German, Palestinian, and Palestinian-German youth participating in a federally and locally sponsored program meant to teach them about German history and to address their own antisemitism.1 I was there as an observer who could not help but be dislodged from my professional role and deeply moved by flakes of bone on the ground, and sites of intimate, state-sponsored murder: a shooting wall where guards killed at close range; the collection and smell of the human hair of the murdered a wheelbarrow used to carry human ashes produced after the gas chamber in crematoria. I was moved also by the tears and horror of these same youth, also traumatized by the remains of state-sponsored mass murder. Although the program that led them to Auschwitz was meant to teach them democracy, I wondered about the extent to which actually existing democracy, using its tool ...

Routledge eBooks, Feb 2, 2023

Anthropological Quarterly

University of California Press eBooks, 2011

Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2021

ABSTRACT This piece centrally engages Alana Lentin’s book, Why Race Still Matters, and thinks abo... more ABSTRACT This piece centrally engages Alana Lentin’s book, Why Race Still Matters, and thinks about it in relation to changing the world. If we undo “race” will we undo racism? Lentin’s charge to undo race raises further questions about this undoing in relation to particular experiences of racism. Along these lines, the piece works through her critique of Afropessimism and thinks through the necessity to take seriously the critique of anti-Black racism as a critical component of imagining a future coalitional politics. Ultimately, one might ask, do we need to undo race in order to undo the world, or do we need to undo the world in order to undo race?

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 2021

With Detroit as its principal site, this essay examines the possibility and the hope for developi... more With Detroit as its principal site, this essay examines the possibility and the hope for developing a decolonial practice as part of the research in and of a “Black” city. What can we learn from Detroit and what needs to change about ethnography in order for this kind of learning to take place? Can ethnography become a decolonial form or must it be undone and re-emerge as a different kind of intervention in order to effectively contribute to a decolonizing practice? Who should be the interlocutors? Who should be the authors? To what extent must we reimagine the audience? How must ethnography’s practitioners reconfigure processes of collaboration in order to effectively change the form?

This bilingual volume (English/German) gives insight into the experiences of the Black Diaspora i... more This bilingual volume (English/German) gives insight into the experiences of the Black Diaspora in Germany and the connections of the international Black Dias­po­ra with Germany. Topics range from the 18th century to the present and from social history to literature, art and popular culture. The book includes chapters on political initiatives, theoretical issues, historical overviews and individual case studies. It offers reflections on the rela­tionships between Black German Studies and Critical Whiteness Studies to hegemonic traditions of knowl­edge production, between racism and nationhood, and between colonial history and later developments. Fur­ther topics include the intersectionality of ‘race’, class and gender; and the position of Black people in cultural production, between commodification, performativity and subversion. Chapters include academic analy­ses from History and Cultural Studies, as well as contribu­tions by and about activists, artists and historical wit­nesses,...