https://www.e-flux.

com/architecture/history-theory/225180/colonial-ramifications/

Samia Henni

Colonial
Ramifications

The American Uncle Sam follows the British John Bull in their racist “civilizing mission.” Victor Gillam,
“The White Man’s Burden (Apologies to Rudyard Kipling),” originally published in Judge magazine,
April 1, 1899. Source: The Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum.

The frame of reference for the vast majority of architectural histories and
theories is central Europe and northern America, which often exclude the
dynamic histories of colonialism, extraction, imperialism, migration, slavery,
and wars, in spite of the fact that architects, decision makers, and
populations have always been involved in these activities. What is often
called “peripheries,” “Global South,” “developing countries,” “non-Western
world,” or the “Other” exists in reference or in opposition to the so-called
“centers,” “Global North,” “developed countries,” “Western-world,” or the
“Self.” This set of measurements derives from and results in a world order
that has colonial features. The assessment of the validity of architecture
and its histories and theories is based on certain notions, paradigms,
figures, forms, texts, buildings, and styles. This mechanism of evaluation
regulates the understanding and interpretation of architecture, as well as
the inclusion and exclusion of its histories and theories. It also promotes
and privileges certain cultural and intellectual aspects over others.
Consequently, these criteria play a crucial role in institutionalizing
architectural histories and theories.

The processes of historicizing built environments from around the world are
contingent on the sources that scholars draw upon and on the languages
that they speak. To dismantle the colonial syndrome is to question the
nature of the materials employed to construct architectural histories and
theories, as well as the linguistic skills and cultural values of the interpreter
of these documents. The interrogation of the interpreter, the why, how, and
what is being interpreted is essential to the examination of the construction
of histories and theories of architecture, their meanings, implications, and
impacts. The written and unwritten protocols of the practice of architecture
history and theory shape the inscription, transcription, production, and
consumption of these histories and theories. Moreover, certain chapters of
these histories and theories may be seen, or used, as instruments
encouraging and reinforcing an intellectual domination and supremacy. The
point here is not to undermine the discipline, nor to ignore the canonical
texts and methodologies, but rather to underline possible conscious or
unconscious colonial ramifications of writing the histories and theories of
the development of the built environments and the dissemination of these
scripts.

For instance, in historicizing early Modern architectural histories and

theories—including European Renaissances—the existence of European
colonial discourses, architecture, and planning in the large and abundant
overseas colonies, colonized territories, departments, and protectorates of
the European empires has often been overlooked and isolated. During this
long period, numerous British, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese,
and Spanish architects, engineers, planners, civil servants, and military
officers were involved in building European empires and developing
architectural knowledge, technologies, and techniques. Several theories,
histories, materials, typologies, norms, forms, terms, buildings, villages, and
cities were established in these “other” geographies since the first wave of
European colonialism that began in the early fifteenth century.

A similar phenomenon occurred in historicizing architectural productions

and knowledges in the aftermath of the Second World War and during the
Cold War. The role that the colonies and colonized people played in
reconstructing European cities and the consequences of the formal end of
European empires have often been disregarded, in spite of the immense
effect and huge scale of these colonial ruptures and legacies. Some of the
most transformative events of the twentieth century occurred in Europe and
in the African continent where various procolonial activities, anticolonial
struggles, and wars for independence were taking place. The maps of these
populations, territories and built environments changed within only a few
years, the socio-spatial and politico-economic consequences of which were
colossal on both sides of the Mediterranean, including the forced
displacement and migration of populations, the presence of foreign military
bases in newly independent countries, the rapid urbanization of cities and
their suburbs, the reorganization of agricultural productions and natural
resources extractions, the redistribution of building construction markets,
the establishment of new political solidarities and alliances, etc. As a
reminder:
In 1941, Ethiopia gained its independence from Italy; 
In 1947, Eritrea from Italy; 
In 1951, Libya from Britain and France; 
In 1956, Sudan from Britain, and Morocco and Tunisia from France; 
In 1957, Ghana from Britain; 
In 1958, Guinea from France; 
In 1960, Cameroon, Senegal, Togo, Mali, Madagascar, Benin, Niger, Burkina Faso,
Ivory Coast, Chad, Central African Republic, Congo (Brazzaville), Gabon, and
Mauritania from France, Congo and Somalia from Belgium, and Nigeria from Britain; 
In 1961, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Tanzania from Britain; 
In 1962, Burundi and Rwanda from Belgium, Algeria from France, and Uganda from
Britain; 
In 1963, Kenya and Zanzibar from Britain; 
In 1964, Malawi and Zambia from Britain; 
In 1965, Gambia from Britain; 
In 1966, Botswana and Lesotho from Britain; 
In 1968, Mauritius and Swaziland from Britain, and Equatorial Guinea from Spain; 
In 1974, Guinea-Bissau from Portugal; 
In 1975, Mozambique, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Principe, and Angola from
Portugal, and Comoros from France; 
In 1976 Western Sahara from Spain, but then occupied by Morocco, and Seychelles
from Britain; 
In 1977 Djibouti from France; 
In 1980 Zimbabwe from Britain; 
In 1990, Namibia from South Africa. 
Ceuta and Melilla in North Africa (and other populations and territories around the
world) are still under colonial rule.

Another flagrant example of these aware or unaware colonial implications of

producing architectural histories and theories may be found in a number of
descriptions of the built environments, as well as of their makers and users
in “other” geographies. Due to a deliberate hegemony or a bizarre
incompetence, these readings and interpretations often distort and
misrepresent the populations and their architecture. They are asserted
through lenses that correspond to the frame of reference of the interpreter
(architect, scholar, traveler, civil servant, military officer, or journalist), who
did not capture the significances of the subject or object in question, but
rather searched for similarities and differences between the “other” and the
“self.” This approach of reading, interpreting, and writing reduces cultural
richness, destroys local specificities, and imposes a universal system of
measurement and evaluation.

The invention of the “other”—racial, religious, or gender—corresponds to

the commencement and the commandment of modern human exploitation
and resource extraction, which long hid behind the mask of the “civilizing
mission.” It was a mission that European colonial regimes self-assigned
themselves in order to intervene in the way that existing communities,
kingdoms, tribes, and societies governed themselves, lived, and built. This
dogmatic and authoritative “civilizing mission” consisted of destabilizing and
discounting prevailing codes and spreading, instead, European beliefs,
principles, and languages in compliance with a colonial ideology dubbed
“assimilation.” Consequently, a number of modern European and white
North-American—as an outcome of European colonialization—histories and
theories of architecture are embedded in the histories of constructs,
oppressions, suppressions, and subjugations.
Similarly, naming certain historical periods, and thereby their corresponding
built environments, is dependent on a European frame of reference. This
reference is partial, inappropriate, and sometimes outright erroneous. The
“pre-Columbian” era refers to the history of the Americas before the arrival
of Italian navigator and colonist Cristopher Columbus in the Americas, as if
this territory did not exist before a European man saw it for the first time.
The appellation “American Indian” Architecture refers to the built
environments of the people that Columbus mistakenly
named Indios (“Indians”) as he believed that he reached the shores of East
Indies during his search for a western passage to the Indies. European
colonizers have also invented the appellations “Negro village,” “village
nègre,” “villaggi negri,” “Negerdorf,” “Negerdörfli,” in order to name the
settlements that were inhabited by brown and black populations in
colonized African territories. It was the Portuguese who introduced the term
“Negro”—literally meaning “black”—in the fifteenth century to designate
Bantu peoples that the Portuguese had encountered when they arrived in
Southern Africa. Since then, the term has been used in various languages
and forms, and it epitomizes a myriad of violent histories and racist
connotations, which continue to this day.

When architectural histories and theories endeavor to question the

processes and achievements of modernity and technology, they should
include the history of capital, warfare, and colonialism, even if the majority
of these histories are formulated and taught for the most part in schools and
departments of architecture and art history. If territories and built
environments are treated as documents of particular socio-cultural and
politico-economic moments, they can be interrogated, challenged, rewritten,
and taught in relation to these moments, rather than in isolation from them.
This is not to advocate for “hybridity” or a “third way,” but rather to amplify
the discussed or undiscussed possibilities and limits of the discipline. The
very fact that this text is written in English and published on this platform
has its possibilities, as well as its limits—this is obvious. But to problematize
the possibilities as well as the limits of this condition is not a norm.
Over the course of the last decades, architectural histories and theories
have dialogued with and borrowed from other disciplines, including
philosophy, geography, environmental and critical studies, feminist, queer,
political, and postcolonial theories. Some of these conversations have
produced stimulating and prolific perspectives. They have introduced an
essential re-writing and re-reading of established actors, authors, events,
and texts. These dialogues are, however, contingent on the linguistic
capabilities, cultural values, and the aforementioned frame of reference of
those who produce and disseminate them. In other words, some of these
disciplines suffer from the same colonial symptoms they seek to redress as
they failed to account for race or class differences, and therefore, they do
not—indeed, cannot—always release the colonial ramifications of
architectural histories and theories. This is also because the essence of
architectural histories and theories is distilled in a laboratory that selects,
boils, and condenses only, and often exclusively, certain types of
components. This filter impacts the very reading and interpreting of these
histories and fortifies the hegemony of the distilled narrative. There is no
doubt that the incorporation of other disciplinary knowledges resulted in
constructive and crucial shifts, but there is also the need to acknowledge
that some of these knowledges are bound by colonial frames of reference,
thought, and dissemination.

The reexamination of the cartographies of architectural histories and

theories demands a renegotiation of methodological boundaries and bias, a
reconsideration of theoretical assumptions and conventions, and a
recognition of geographical absences and presences. To be effective and
infective, this expansion cannot count on adding to what is already there,
because this will mimic the binary oppositions between “North” and “South,”
or between “West” and “East,” strengthening the domination of colonial
narratives and maintaining its frame of reference. Rather, this
reexamination should rethink the very episteme that architectural
historiography has generated and circulated; that is, to theorize the very
architectural histories that are taught today around some parts of the world
and that, sometimes, seem to be homogeneous and hegemonic. If this
seems to be a huge effort, or an impossible mission, then there is
something problematic about architectural knowledge, education, pedagogy
and practices.

Colonial ramifications also refer to endocolonial impulses and neocolonial

attitudes. These comportments are structural and they obey the
commandment of the dominant race, class, religion, ethnicity, or gender.
They dictate and influence the intellectual sustenance and the financial
support of what should be researched, archived, and historicized, and what
should not. Endocolonial and neocolonial conditions of people and by
people—and their respective built environments—are being formed,
informed, and performed by the coloniality of race, class, religion, ethnicity,
or gender. To consider this colonial domination and systematic marginality
of certain regions and groups—which characterize various democratic
states—is to ask authors and readers to stop searching for absences,
deficiencies, and dysfunctionalities, and begin observing and absorbing
what is there without trying to associate it with what they know. The
historical phenomenon of colonialism and the plurality of effects,
representations, and discourses it has engendered, including the racist
“civilizing mission” and the violent ideology of “modernity,” composes a
number of architectural histories and theories. It is thus vital to join those
who have started to provide a critique of coloniality of architectural histories
and theories—in their multiple temporal and spatial manifestations—which
not only challenges the limits of conventional narratives and hegemonic
interpretations, but also destabilizes ideological colonial assumptions and
mobilizes a variety of anticolonial approaches and voices.

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History/Theory is a collaboration between the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture
(gta), ETH Zürich and e-flux Architecture.
Samia Henni is the author of Architecture of Counterrevolution: The French Army in Northern
Algeria (gta Verlag, 2017; Editions B42, 2019), the editor of War Zones (gta Verlag, 2018), and
the exhibitor of “Discreet Violence: Architecture and the French Army in Algeria” (Zurich,
Rotterdam, Berlin, Johannesburg, Prague, Paris, Ithaca, Philadelphia; 2017–2019), “Housing
Pharmacology” (Marseille, Zurich, 2020) and “Right to Housing” (Marseille, 2020). She received
her Ph.D. in the history and theory of architecture (with distinction) from ETH Zurich. She is
currently Assistant Professor at the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning at Cornell
University.