Postcolonial Theory and Architecture: Methodological Contemplations and Practical Implications

The central question of this seminar is: what can postcolonial theories and methodologies bring to the historiography of architecture and the city? This question will not be answered ex abstracto, but rather by looking at a concrete practice of history writing by the scholar-lecturer of this seminar. Personal reflections and experiences will be used as a starting point for a broader dialogue with participants on the value of postcolonial theory for the field of architectural historiography.

Each seminar will be accompanied by a selection of two texts. One text is drawn from the large body of literature that can be loosely termed postcolonial theory. The other text is written by the scholar-lecturer and can be understood as an attempt to revise the historiography of urban architecture under the influence of postcolonial perspectives. Participants are invited to read these two texts before the seminar. The texts will serve as a background for discussions during the seminar.

Each seminar will consist of a presentation of methodological considerations, based on some of the selected texts from the field of postcolonial theory, and of practical implications, as they emerge from publications and exhibitions. These presentations will be followed by a discussion on the historiographical relevance of postcolonial perspectives and methodologies.

Tutor

Prof. dr. Tom Avermaete

Time and Location

The course will take place on Thursdays from 17:45 to 18:30 in room HIL F 10.3.

Course structure and material

• 10.10.2024 Postcolonial Theory - What is postcolonial theory and what points of departure does it offer?

protected page Edward W. Said, Orientalism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978. Introduction and chapter 1.

• 17.10.2024 Postcolonial Theory - What is postcolonial theory and what points of departure does it offer?

protected page Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press, 1963. Chapter ‘Concerning Violence’, 35-95.

protected page Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, in Williams, Patrick, and Laura Chrisman. Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994, 66-111.

protected page Tom Avermaete, ‘Beyond Innocence: The Norms and Forms of Colonial Urban Landscapes‘ in Braae, Ellen, and Henriette Steiner (eds.) Routledge Research Companion to Landscape Architecture. (Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2019), 73-85.

• 31.10.2024 Autonomy and Heteronomy - How to conceive of the character of architecture between autonomy and heteronomy?

protected page Louis Althusser, ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses: Notes Towards an Investigation’ by Ben Brewster in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (New York: Monthly Review, 2002).

protected page Tom Avermaete, ‘Architecture ‘Talks Back’: On the (Im)Possibilities of Designing a Critical Architectural Project’, in: Serbian Architectural Journal, no. 3, 2011, 214-225.

• 07.11.2024 Guest Lecture Kohei Saito, Capital in the Antrophocene - How can we, with Marx, learn from pre-capitalist and non-Western societies to imagine an architecture of degrowth?

Kohei Saito, Marx in the Anthropocene towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023).

• 14.11.2024 The Socio-Spatial - How to understand the relation between the social and the spatial?

protected page Edward W. Soja, ‘The Socio-Spatial Dialectic.’ Annals of the Association of American Geographers, vol. 70, no. 2, 1980: 207–225.

protected page Tom Avermaete, ‘From Bidonville to Ville Nouvelle the Built Heritage of Migrant Workers in Post-War France.’ Kritische Berichte, vol. 52, no. 2, 2024: https://doi.org/10.11588/kb.2024.1.101455.

• 21.11.2024 The Artefact - How can we conceive of the architectural material artefact?

protected page Jane Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010).

protected page Tom Avermaete, ‘Balcony’, in Koolhaas, Rem (ed.) Elements of Architecture, (Köln: Taschen, 2018), 1078-1238.

• 28.11.2024 The Authors - Who are the authors of architecture?

protected page Mary Louise Pratt, ‘Arts of the Contact Zone.’ Profession 91. 1991: 39-46.

protected page Tom Avermaete, Cathelijne Nuijsink, ‘An architecture culture of ‘contact zones’: Prospects for an alternative historiography of modernism,’ in Vikramaditya Prakash, Maristella Casciato, Daniel E. Coslett (eds.), Rethinking Global Modernism (London: Routledge, 2022), 103-119.

• 05.12.2024 Centers and Peripheries - How can we go beyond Western centrism and colonial perspectives?

protected page Ananya Roy, ‘Slumdog Cities: Rethinking Subaltern Urbanism.’ International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. 35.2 (2011): 223-238

protected page Tom Avermaete, ‘Death of the Author, Center and Meta-Theory: Emerging planning histories and expanding methods of the early 21st century’, in Carola Hein (ed.), Handbook on Planning History (London: Routledge, 2019), 478-486.