Abstract
Kader Attia coined the famous dictum that ‘reparation is the awareness of the wound.’ Severe destruction and damages, such as those caused by violence, cultural death, natural catastrophes, or global heating, are irreversible. In cases caused by historical guilt in particular, fundamental recognition can be achieved by legal action, and a certain degree of compensation can be provided through material compensation. Such acts are often necessary preconditions for reparative processes. Nevertheless, irreparable damage often remains in people and societies that cannot be undone in a generation. This is where cultural practices such as literature and film, archives and testimonies, theatre and museums, public discourse, rituals and forums come into play, as they can be used to address such irreparable damage. They are indispensable because cultural practices open up spaces for experiencing the contradictory, controversial and ambivalent, because in the mode of fiction, the co-existing, complex and even utopian become thinkable. The presentation illustrates this with concrete examples and at the same time presents the Käte Hamburger Kolleg for Cultural Practices of Reparation CURE, which was established in Saarbrücken in 2024.
Speaker
Markus Messling is full professor of Romance literatures and comparative literary and cultural studies at Saarland University and director of the Käte Hamburger Centre for Cultural Practices of Reparation (CURE). He is an ordinary member of Academia Europaea and has held visiting professorships and fellowships at EHESS Paris, the University of Cambridge, the School of Advanced Study/University of London, and Kobe University in Japan.
The REPAIR lectures
The REPAIR lectures are an interdisciplinary lecture series on contemporary reparations demands and policies around the globe. They are given by leading reparations experts and investigate how reparations claims and policies come about, how they play out from a political, economic and moral perspective, and what they may teach us about politics and economics today. The lectures are hosted by the REPAIR project, based at the Anthropology Department of the University of Amsterdam (UvA). They are co-sponsored by the UvA’s Amsterdam Centre for Conflict Studies (ACCS).