“ … based on the skewed theory building of the postcolonial movement”: Media conflicts surrounding postcolonial studies and antisemitism in Germany

Abstract

The increasing recognition of postcolonial studies gave rise to a revisionist counter-movement on the conservative side in Germany, which went largely unnoticed until 2019. In the course of media conflicts over antisemitism in recent years, however, a majority opinion emerged in the liberal and left-wing camps that fundamentally suspected and criticized postcolonial studies as antisemitic. The essay traces some of these conflicts in the German public sphere (around Achille Mbembe, the so-called Second Historians’ Controversy, the art exhibition documenta 15, and the reactions to 7 October 2023) and develops a model of three approaches (delimited concept of antisemitism, historical context of the Federal Republic of Germany, Eurocentrism) to explain this hegemony.