Peggy Piesche

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Peggy Piesche (2018)

Peggy Piesche (* 1968 in Arnstadt , GDR ) is a German literary and cultural scientist, works in adult education and works as a consultant for diversity , intersectionality and decoloniality at the Federal Agency for Civic Education . Peggy Piesche is one of the most famous voices of black women in Germany.

Life

education

Peggy Piesche was born in 1968 in Arnstadt (Thuringia) in what was then the GDR. From 1974 to 1984 she attended the Polytechnic High School in Arnstadt, after which she completed her vocational training with a high school diploma at the Gotha-Friedrichswerth company vocational school. From 1987 Piesche studied German and Russian to become a teacher at the Pedagogical University in Erfurt / Mühlhausen with a semester abroad in Smolensk (USSR). After the fall of the Berlin Wall , Piesche moved to Tübingen to study modern German literature, ancient history and philosophy from 1990. She completed her studies in 1995 with a Magister Artium.

Scientific career

After completing her studies, Piesche taught at the Universities of Bonn and Bochum from 1996 to 1999. She then moved to the University of Utrecht , where she worked as a DAAD lecturer at the German Institute from 1996 to 2001. In 2001 she became a member of the Graduate School “Travel Literature and Cultural Anthropology” at the University of Paderborn and held various teaching positions at the Berlin Humboldt and Free Universities. From 2004 to 2007 Piesche was a research associate at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, where she coordinated the third-party funded project Black European Studies .

In 2007 Piesche moved to the United States, where he initially taught at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie (NY), and from 2010 at Hamilton College in Clinton (NY). She then worked from 2013 to 2016 at the Academy of Advanced African Studies at the University of Bayreuth with a research focus on “Future Concepts in Africa and the Diaspora”. In Bayreuth, she worked on the entanglement of diaspora and translocality, the performativity of cultures of remembrance, as well as Black Feminist Future Studies and Critical Race / Whiteness Studies.

After completing her university career, Piesche moved to the Gunda Werner Institute for Feminism and Gender Democracy at the Heinrich Böll Foundation in 2017 . There she worked as a consultant on reproductive justice and intersectional politics of memory. Since November 2019 Piesche has worked as a consultant for diversity, intersectionality and decoloniality at the Federal Agency for Civic Education.

Political commitment

Since 1990 Piesche has been active in the black feminist movement both in Germany and internationally. Since 1990 she has been a member of ADEFRA , of which she was an honorary board member for a long time. For ADEFRA she was, among other things, a representative on an advisory board for the drafting of the Equal Treatment Act.

During her stay in the USA, Piesche was a member of the YWCA. Since 2016 she has been an Executive Board Member of ASWAD, the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora .

In 2018, Piesche worked in ADEFRA's scientific specialist group "Diversifying Matters", which took steps to implement the UN Decade for people of African origin in a consultation process entitled "Making the discrimination situation and social resilience of people of African origin visible" for the Berlin Senate 2015–2024.

Positions

Piesche (2018)

Peggy Piesche is one of the best-known voices of black women in Germany; she is received primarily through her experience as a black woman in the GDR context. It reflects the lack of racism-critical terms for non-white people and groups in the GDR. It also reflects the perception of reunification from a marginalized and migrant perspective, from which reunification appeared primarily as a unity of “white East Germany” and “white West Germany”. At the same time, she addresses the space gained for a better organization of black people in both parts of the country.

In addition to her black and East German perspective, Piesche is received through her lesbianism. She criticizes actors in the German gay and lesbian scene and describes Christopher Street Day as a “depoliticized, conventionalized story” in which blacks, queers and trans people are not represented. Piesche also criticizes the commemoration of the 1968 movement , in which the contribution of the black and people of color movement is far too short. She advocates a "decolonization" of the memory of the 68ers.

Works (selection)

Peggy Piesche is the author and editor of several publications and articles:

  • Sensitivity in the room. Poems , in: Olumide Popoola, Beldan Sezen (Hrsg.): Talking Home. Home from our own pen. Women of Color in Germany, Amsterdam, 1999.
  • Taboo?! - What we don't talk about ... Intercultural communication in German-Dutch relations , DAB bulletin, Vol. 78, 1996–99, Heilbronn, 1999.
  • Identity and perception in literary texts by black German women authors of the 1990s , in: Gelbin, Konuk, Piesche, 1999.
  • together with Cathy S. Gelbin and Kader Konuk: Aufbruch: Cultural productions by migrant, black and Jewish women in Germany , Königsberg / Th .; 1999.
  • Water from the desert. Black women authors in Germany. An anthology , Berlin, Orlanda Frauenverlag; 2002.
  • with Maureen M. Eggers, Grada Kilomba and Susan Arndt: Myths, Masks and Subjects. Critical whiteness research in Germany ; Münster, Unrast-Verlag, 2005, republished in 2009. ISBN 978-3-89771-458-8
  • with Susan Arndt: being white. The necessity of critical whiteness research , in: Susan Arndt and Nadja Ofuatey-Alazard: (K) Erben des Kolonialismus in the knowledge archive German language. A critical reference work , Münster 2011, ISBN 9783897715011
  • Your silence does not protect you: Audre Lorde and the black women's movement in Germany , Berlin, Orlanda 2012, ISBN 978-3-936937-95-4
  • Inscriptions into the Past, Anticipations of the Future: Audre Lorde and the Black Woman's Movement in Germany , in: S. Bolaki and S. Broeck (eds.): Audre Lorde's "Transnational Legacies" , University of Massachusetts Press, 2016.
  • Exclusionary Acts: The Un-Making of Black German Agency in Transnational Black (German) Studies 2–3 , A Conversation between Nicola Lauré al-Samarai and Peggy Piesche. With paintings by Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi, 2018 (available online: Part 1 , Part 2 and Part 3 )
  • Decolonize 68! On the method of intersectional memory work , alpha nova, Berlin, 2019
  • Political intersectionality as a healing offer , in: Gunda-Werner-Institut and Center for Intersectional Justice (ed.): "Reach Everyone on the Planet ..." Kimberlé Crenshaw and intersectionality, April 2019, ISBN 978-3-86928-198-8 ( available online )

Web links

Commons : Peggy Piesche  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Azadê Peşmen: Non-white view of the turnaround - The new "we" without us. In: Zeitfragen. Deutschlandfunk Kultur, November 6, 2019, accessed on December 1, 2019 .
  2. ↑ a b c d Interview with Peggy Piesche about lesbians in the GDR: “Visibility can never be just your own”. In: girls team. May 26, 2015, accessed December 1, 2019 .
  3. ^ Peggy Piesche | Gunda Werner Institute. Retrieved July 9, 2020 .
  4. ^ Peggy Piesche: Black and German? An East German Youth Before 1989 - Retrospective on a 'nonexistent' topic in the GDR. In: Heimatkunde - Migration Policy Portal. Heinrich Böll Foundation, accessed on December 1, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Kemi Fatoba: The Adefra initiative shows black women * in Germany what courage means. In: Vogue.de. May 23, 2019, accessed December 1, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Rafaela Siegenthaler: "Critical whiteness is a survival strategy". In: an.schlag - the feminist magazine. November 2, 2013, accessed December 2, 2019 .
  7. ↑ Stefan Hunglinger: "A Depoliticized History". In: taz.de. 2019, accessed December 26, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Piesche, Peggy
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German literary and cultural scientist
DATE OF BIRTH 1968
PLACE OF BIRTH Arnstadt , GDR