The Herero: Witnessing Germany's “Other Genocide”

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn 2015, for the first time in 111 years, top German government followed postcolonial historical scholarship, literary production, and political activism in recognizing part of the German-Herero-Nama Colonial War of 1904-1908 for what it was: the first genocide of the twentieth century. Against the backdrop of Didier Fassin's genealogy of classical definitions of “witness” and Judith Butler's theorizing the wartime rationale of differentiating between lives worth protecting and lives that can be destroyed with impunity, this article investigates diverse German, Herero and related African written and oral testimonies to explore: the spectrum of witness accounts—referred to as “multiperspectivity” in this article—and the attendant perspectives and agendas; the value or lack thereof placed on the life or death of members of witnesses’ own or their enemy's race in the colonial context; and the significance such witness accounts have for today's views on the Herero genocide.