„Sollten unsere Vorfahren Menschen gewesen sein wie diese?“ Versuch einer postkolonialen Lektüre von Eberhard Hilschers Darwin-Erzählung

Abstract

Should our Antedates Have Been People Like These?“ A Try of Postcolonial Reading of the Story about Darwin by Eberhard Hilscher The following paper presents a postcolonial reading (combined with the ideology-critical approach) of the little-known story about Darwin by the East German writer Eberhard Hilscher. The analysis focuses on the perception of the foreign and the own by the fi gures of the story and it also refers to the overlapping of the terms race and class. The considerations lead to the conclusion that in the story the foreign is constructed preferably with the help of the opposition culture (the own) and nature (the foreign), and that hierarchical and dichotomous thinking characterizes also Darwin, even if in his case one can see certain ambivalences.