The Funambulist No. 10 - Architecture & Colonialism

The tenth issue of The Funambulist operates somehow in continuity with issue 9 Islands (January-Februaru 2017), which offered the words of indigenous and anticolonial struggles from various islands of the world. Voices from Kanaky, Mayotte, Hawai’i, and Puerto Rico resonate therefore here with those from Libya, Kenya, Palestine, and Java, in the colonial situations they all describe. While the last issue was dedicated to the seminal work of Édouard Glissant, inscribed throughout the pages of this present one is the influence of another Martiniquais: Frantz Fanon.

The two editorial arguments of this issue are simple: colonialism is not an era, it is a system of military/police, legal, administrative, social, and cultural system of domination; and, architecture is not (only) an aesthetic vessel, it is an apparatus organizing and hierarchizing bodies in space.