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.