ITS:

Abstract :

Office of the Academic Dean and the Art Department present:
Yetunde Olaiya, resident Riley Scholar will speak Thursday March 9 at 
1200-
100pm in the Bemis Lounge.   
Title: "We No Longer Build Haphazardly": Jean-Henri Calsat and the 
Technopolitics of Postwar Architectural Production in French Black 
Africa

Full Message :

Office of the Academic Dean and the Art Department present:
Yetunde Olaiya, resident Riley Scholar will speak Thursday March 9 at 1200-
100pm in the Bemis Lounge.   
Title: "We No Longer Build Haphazardly": Jean-Henri Calsat and the 
Technopolitics of Postwar Architectural Production in French Black Africa

Abstract:
In the aftermath of World War II, French Black Africa was the scene of 
intense architectural activity. Numerous housing schemes, urban plans, and 
public buildings were being constructed thanks to a new grasp of 
technological artifacts, systems, and practices, forging a new form of 
technical expertise. Technical expertise, in turn, helped forge the 
appearance of technological prowess central necessary for France to rebuild 
its image as a world power. Yet technology was never a neutral tool of 
politics; because of the material properties that inflect its enactment of 
politics in unpredictable ways, it was instead a form of politics in its own 
right -- that is, "technopolitics." In the case of Jean-Henri Calsat, a key 
proponent of the technical expertise behind postwar architectural production 
in French Black Africa, this paper argues that technopolitics resulted in 
both success and failure.