Complex Implication in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Afterlives

Abstract This paper argues that implication in German colonialism is a central concern in Gurnah’s Afterlives (2020). The novel suggests that German colonialism implicated in its crimes the colonized population and third parties who believed themselves mere bystanders – a process that standard accounts usually do not allow us to see since they are premised on the rigid positions of perpetrator, victim, and bystander. In the words of Michael Rothberg, on whose vocabulary developed in The Implicated Subject the paper draws, “the production of injustice and processes of victimization do not necessarily result from deliberate acts of evil or a particular will to violence, but rather from an accumulation of distinct, dispersed actions” (2019, 53). Gurnah’s focus on implication does not diminish the horror of German colonialism by putting part of the blame on the colonized. It sheds light on German colonialism’s more complicated mechanisms, on reasons for its lasting effects, and on the fact that these mechanisms took advantage of already existing forms of exploitation.