Zitationsvorschlag

Shilliam, Robbie et al.: The Colonial Making of Bremen’s Peri-Urban Port Area, in Chatterjee, Sukla et al. (Hrsg.): Postcolonial Oceans: Contradictions, Heterogeneities, Knowledges, Materialities, Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing, 2023 (Anglophone Postcolonial Studies, Band 1), S. 219–236. https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.1046.c17310

Identifier (Buch)

ISBN 978-3-96822-158-8 (PDF)
ISBN 978-3-96822-159-5 (Hardcover)

Veröffentlicht

09.11.2023

Autor/innen

Lilli Hasche, Janne Jensen

The Colonial Making of Bremen’s Peri-Urban Port Area

ABSTRACT The colonial endeavor, being a project of extraction and expansion at its core, depended on stable infrastructures and affected both colony and metropole. Bremen’s docklands, now marketed as the Überseestadt, come up as one such structure and indicator of the effects of colonialism in European metropoles. This article contrasts the event-centered narrative of the con­struction of the port with praxeological and postcolonial approaches to the making of colonialism. To lay open how ports can be described as colonial, we conceptualize Bremen’s docklands through two distinct sets of practices in its global-historical context: 1) practices of representation of interests and politics of port construction; and 2) practices of technoscientific port construction. Researching the colonial and global-historical foundations of port cities and their infrastructures allow us to better understand colo­nialism as global praxis. They offer a trajectory through which to think about contemporary postcolonial power asymmetries and inequalities.

KEYWORDS colonial port construction, imperial infrastructures, postco­lonial Science and Technology Studies, waterfront revitalization