Between camps: race and culture in postmodernity - An inaugural lecture

This short piece invites reconsideration of the impact of modern raciology on the formation of the academic humanities. In the light of that all too e asily forgotten connection, it asks what place the memory of the Nazi perio d should now enjoy in contemporary scholarly work oriented by its oppositio n to fraternalist and populist ultra-nationalism. The memory of the Third R eich can be recovered in a number of different ways not all of which are al ive to the relationship between anti-Nazi resistance and the dynamic opposi tion to colonial power that succeeded it. In conclusion, the cosmopolitan a nd humanist sensibilities articulated by some of the Nazis' colonial prison ers of war are put forward as a resource for contemporary thinking about 'r ace', difference and multi-culture.