Karakul Circulations

Ethnographic Approaches to Colonial Genealogies of Knowledge

Abstract

This article is based on a collaborative research project in which we explore the historical and contemporary traces of colonial violence in Namibia. We (Memory Biwa, Eleanor Schaumann and I) are looking at a multi-species configuration that links Germany, Namibia and South Africa and touches on the boundaries between humans and animals, agrarian economics and colonial race science in a multi-layered way. The project focuses on the transformation of the southern Namibian landscape through the colonial land grab and the massive settlement of Karakul sheep as a central export product for the global fur industry (“Persians”), whereby genocidal and epistemic violence were closely intertwined and still reverberate today. But how can these constellations be examined without reproducing the violence? In our project, we bring together historical, ethnographic and artistic positions in order to reveal and at the same time irritate the colonial knowledge genealogies associated with Karakul. In my contribution, I present our collaboration along the paths we have followed in our research. I reflect on the possibilities of a decolonial (knowledge) practice through three aspects of ethnographic knowledge production: a) ethnographic presence, b) ethnographic description and c) ethnographic representation.