The tension between wokeness and white privilege

We are already seeing agencies advising publishing houses on gender-sensitive issues, and revising manuscripts accordingly. Certain authors, in notes to their publications, apologise in advance for having unintentionally offended any readers. The collection Beißreflexe. Kritik an queerem Aktivismus, autoritären Sehnsüchten, Sprechverboten, published by the queer activist Patsy L’Amour laLove, was banned from a queer book fair in Berlin-Kreuzberg due to its content, which caused several publishers to withdraw from the event.

The Frankfurter Buchmesse collection ‘What Am I?’ sheds light on the controversial facets of the current debate. In his personal account Der weiße Fleck, Mohamed Amjahid holds up a mirror to the majority in our society, and describes the daily racism to which he is subjected as the son of a Moroccan migrant worker.

Alice Hasters and Noah Sow are two passionate representatives of the younger generation who bring their own lucid points of view to the debate. In their opinion, the question ‘Where are you from?’ comes from a racist place, even if the speaker does not personally mean it that way. We often hear about white people – ostensibly out of admiration, but often without asking – touching the hair of people of colour. This too is rooted in racism, the authors argue: it is yet another manifestation of the kind of structural racism that goes beyond individual intentions.

In Exit Racism, author Tupoka Ogette has written an instruction manual on how to think in an anti­racist way. It is an instruction manual in the literal sense: Ogette, a workshop leader and antiracism trainer, structures her book as a dialogue and aims it explicitly at a white readership.

With his book Identität im Zwielicht, art historian Jörg Scheller wants to move between the two front lines rather than cowering in the trenches. He stresses the importance of having a concept of identity, as long as it remains descriptive and does not start to posit static essences in an ‘ideologically prescriptive’ way.

It is clear that the postcolonial identity debate poses questions not only about the individual’s ability to cope with everyday life, but in particular about every form of art. The essay Wie frei ist die Kunst? by journalist and art critic Hanno Rauterberg, is a passionate plea for the ‘universal freedom of art’.

The work Postkoloniale Theorie, already in its third edition, is aimed at an academic audience. This study by academics Maria do Mar Castro Varela and Nikita Dhawan looks at the founding texts of postcolonial theory by Edward W. Said (1978), Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1988) and Homi K. Bhabha (1994), and analyses them in their current context.

Author Mithu M. Sanyal appeals to a broad public with her novel Identitti, which was shortlisted for the German Book Prize in 2021. In the novel, a person of colour – a professor of postcolonial studies and undisputed figurehead of her department – is found to have perpetrated a deliberate deception. Professor Saraswati is not really a person of colour, as she claims – she’s a white woman! It is no coincidence that this title should appear at the end of an article about such a deeply controversial subject. In her review of Identitti, author Alina Bronsky wrote: ‘What a mercilessly funny search for identity, in which nothing and nobody is spared. Reading it not only makes you smarter – it also puts you in a better mood.’ 

© Tobias Voss

Tobias Voss was Vice President of International Markets at the Frankfurter Buchmesse. As such, he was responsible for relations with the fair’s international clients. He is currently working as a consultant for Frankfurter Buchmesse.