PS32 Colonial Past in the Neo-Colonial Present 08:30 - 10:40 Friday, 20th April, 2018 Meeting Room 6 Track Track 5

08:35 - 08:55

PS32 Colonial Carcerality and the Neocolonial Indian Prison

Mira Rai Waits Appalachian State University, Boone, USA

Abstract

Nestled within the elite Alipore district of Kolkata, capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, is the Alipore Central Jail. Still in use today, Alipore functions simultaneously as a memorial to anti-colonial resistance and as a testament to the lasting legacy of colonial infrastructure in the neocolonial setting. Constructed in 1910 using a radial plan, Alipore was commissioned to replace the dilapidated buildings of the old Alipore Jail, built a hundred years earlier. With its “modern” plan, this new Alipore promised to provide a more secure prison facility for Calcutta, which had become especially politically-charged, during the growing turbulence of the nationalist movement. In the decades that followed, many of the most prominent figures of the movement would reside within the jail as political prisoners. Today the cells that once contained these leaders have been repurposed as memorials; busts sit atop pedestals inside the cells with commemorative plaques marking the leaders’ dates of incarceration. When the British left India in 1947, the leaders of India’s newly-independent government, many of whom were political prisoners, viewed the reform of the colonial prison system as a top priority. Jail committees were formed and the Indian government sought the help of the UN to improve prison designs and management in the immediate aftermath of independence, however the vast majority of Indian states including, West Bengal, continue to this day to utilize colonial buildings and the colonial model of management. Using the Alipore jail as primary example, this paper seeks to explore the complex relationship between the colonial past and the infrastructural landscape of the neocolonial city. The contemporary Indian prison system is a particularly poignant and complex case study, as its buildings symbolically memorialize the fight against oppression, but in day-to-day operation continue to reinforce the disciplinary system of colonial oppressors. 08:55 - 09:15

PS32 British Colonial Singapore Today: Post-colony or Neo-colony?

Nathan Bullock Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

Abstract

British colonization of Singapore produced many significant effects on the urban landscape. It developed into a major trading hub as part of the Straits Settlements and was given its first master plan by Sir Stamford Raffles in 1822. A study of key British buildings from this era which remain in Singapore today allows for an interpretation of the current government’s relationship with . I ask whether independent, contemporary Singapore has developed into a postcolonial context critical of its colonial legacy or become a neo-colony for the ruling class and global élite. Self-rule was granted in 1959 and full independence was achieved in 1965. Since that time a single political party has been in power and a single family has headed the government for nearly as long. I argue that the preservation and selective reuse of British colonial buildings reveals a neocolonial present which challenges the notion of a post-colonial break in 1965. Examples to be covered include the Botanic Garden, Raffles Hotel, and Government House. These venues continue to serve identical functions in post-colonial Singapore as in colonial Singapore. I argue that this is not the result of an overarching concern for historic preservation, a heritage movement, or the values of architectural pedagogy in Singapore. Rather, it is the result of neocolonial processes which continue the cultural of Anglo design at the expense of vernacular architectures. The Raffles Town Plan continues to influence the historic built environment of Singapore by providing the basis for which areas are designated historic neighborhoods and which locally designed buildings to not get preserved or acknowledged. This presentation of the past serves the purpose of portraying an image of Singapore’s present day power derived from its former position in the British Empire and current position as leading the neocolonial processes in globalizing Southeast Asia. 09:15 - 09:35

PS32 Architecture, Conversion and Civic Identity in France and Algeria, 1832– Present

Ralph Ghoche Barnard College, New York, USA

Abstract

On July 6, 1962, a day after achieving independence from France, a group of eight hundred men and women rushed into Algiers’ Saint-Philippe Cathedral and reclaimed it as the central mosque of the city. The Ketchaoua mosque, as the church was known before its forced christianization in 1832, officially reopened on the anniversary of the outbreak of the Algerian Revolution a few months later. The Ketchaoua mosque has recently reentered public consciousness in the wake of debates regarding the need for Islamic spaces of worship in France. Advocates for the conversion of disused Christian churches have pointed to the Ketchaoua mosque and other such appropriations of religious sites during the modern colonial era as justification for their demands. These advocates have met unsurprising resistance from public officials, including Nicolas Sarkozy, the former president of the French republic. This debate has helped reignite discussions over the role that immigrants and former colonial subjects are to play in France’s public sphere and civic identity. My proposed contribution to “Colonial Past in the Neocolonial Present” will examine Algiers’ Ketchaoua mosque in relation to contemporary discussions regarding cultural integration and identity. I demonstrate that the Ketchaoua mosque’s architectural conversion into a cathedral during the 1850s and 60s marked a new stage in church design in Algeria, one which moved from neoclassicism to the adoption of a “Neo-Moorish” style. I propose that the shift reflected an assimilationist streak in Second Empire France, one which aimed to assimilate and absorb Algiers’ populations into the larger totality that was French identity, while also quite clearly being a mandate for cultural violence, and for the appropriation and subjugation of a people. The contradictory and duplicitous nature of these aims will allow for a broader reflection on today’s debates. 09:35 - 09:55

PS32 The Riad’s Resurgence: Questioning the Historical Legacy and Currency of the Maghrebi Courtyard House

Nancy Demerdash Wells College, Aurora, NY, USA

Abstract

Like clockwork, recurring nearly every January to March, travel sections of western newspapers and magazines feature articles showcasing exotic adventures to be had in the warmer climes of North Africa, specifically Morocco and to a lesser extent Tunisia. Riads, or multi-level courtyard houses native to all medinas of the Maghreb, are photographed in these orientalist spreads in a manner not dissimilar to the drama of a stage set —darkened rooms framed by lavish drapery and potted date palms, candlelight reflected in the courtyard’s pristine pool, bold hues of zellij tiles enveloping the viewer, and so forth. In recent years, rehabilitation and preservation institutions in Morocco have sought to renovate delapidated riads throughout the country’s cities, specifically with the kingdom’s touristic ventures in mind. Undoubtedly, these projects to refurbish riads, though executed in the name of development, further entangle these countries in various forms of neocolonial economic dependency. Inasmuch as this housing typology has come to embody these exoticizing fantasies for western indulgence (and eastern, indulgence, considering the flock from the Arab Gulf to Morocco), for the respective French colonial administrations of Algeria, Tunis, and Morocco and their colonial settlers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the riad did not represent a model to emulate and replicate, let alone live in. Although the worlds fairs of the same period would propogate myths of cultures in need of being civilized, in architectural practice overall, the imported functionalist, modernist building principles prevailed across the French colonial Maghreb. Using archival material, this paper reconstructs the colonial perceptions, adaptations, and appropriations of the riad and in doing so, questions its historical legacy and necolonial currency. 09:55 - 10:15

PS32 Postcolonial : Erasing Traces of Colonial Pride

Valentina Rozas-Krause University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, USA

Abstract

While Holocaust memorials are a ubiquitous sight in Berlin, no memorial exists to remember the Herero and Nama genocide. The German Army’s brutal conquest of South West Africa (1904), which led to the murder of thousands of natives of present-day Namibia, has been largely overlooked under the veil of “colonial amnesia.” Yet, recent demands for an official German apology have allowed imperial memories to resurface. The contrast between the remembrance of ’s Imperialism and Totalitarianism is perhaps most palpable in the surroundings of the Topography of Terror in the center of Berlin. Only a couple of blocks away from the documentation center of the former Gestapo headquarters, an almost undetectable plaque commemorates the site where the Conference of Berlin was held in 1884, marking the entrance of Germany in the conquest of Africa. While Hannah Arendt argued that the camps and massacres of Germany’s Imperial expansion in Africa were precedents to Germany’s Totalitarianism, the processes of atonement and remembrance of the Nama and Herero genocide has been largely overshadowed by those of the Holocaust. Analyzing a working-class neighborhood, named Afrikanisches Viertel [African Neighborhood] in honor of Germany’s real and desired colonial conquests in Africa, this paper examines the effects of the resurfacing of colonial memories in the built environment of Berlin. Unhappy to see the names of German colonial pioneers in the Afrikanisches Viertel, citizens have created Berlin Postcolonial and organizations alike to lobby for street- name changes, as well as to contextualize the neighborhood’s colonial roots through guided tours and markers. Following the interventions of these activists and tracing the remains of colonial pride, this paper explores the effect of the pending German official apology on the built, lived and perceived environment of the Afrikanisches Viertel and its relationship to the atonement for the Holocaust.