Transnational Colonial Fantasies: Ambivalence, Identity, and the 'Exotic Other' in German, African, and American Contexts in, “Geschichte eines Hottentotten von ihm selbst erzahlt” (1773) by Christian Ludwig Willebrand

Abstract

This paper explores Christian Ludwig Willebrand's Geschichte eines Hottentotten, von ihm selbst erzählt (1773) within the transnational colonial context of 18th-century German and African and American relations. The analysis uses Homi Bhabha’s theories of mimicry and ambivalence and Susanne Zantop's concept of “colonial fantasies” to interrogate the portrayal of Kori, a biracial protagonist, as an emblem of colonial tensions between identity, power, and race. This essay shows how internalized colonial ideologies and mimicry establish hierarchies among the colonized while disrupting colonial binaries. Moreover, it positions Willebrand’s novel an important but complicit text in the colonial imagination while simultaneously offering a structural and psychological dynamic of the 18th-century colonial discourse. In sum, the essay engages with the German colonial ambitions toward Africa and the racial dynamics of the Americas, while reflecting a broader colonial ideology.