Challenging "Old White Dudes' History": Remembering Germany's Colonial Past in Contemporary Comics

abstract: This article analyzes how contemporary German-language comics negotiate the German imperial past. Comics like Widerstand (Daniel Assako, Franky Mindja, Hilaire Djoko, Katharina Lipowski, and Bathilde Maestracci), Otras Rayas (Christian Diaz Orejarena), and Herero Ecke Waterbergstrasse (Illi Anna Heger) rethink the colonial archive, represent silenced, under- or misrepresented elements of imperial history, and offer new perspectives for present-day forms of remembering. We argue for greater inclusion of postimperial comics in the canon of German studies because of their potential to complement and decenter traditional academic approaches, challenging "colonial aphasia," a difficulty speaking about colonialism that has long characterized German colonial memory.