Freiburg im Breisgau
Veranstalter:
Arnold Bergstraesser Institut
Postcolonial Logistics: Eni's African Empire
African postcolonial modernism has been mainly celebrated as the expression of independent nation-building, modernity, development, and pan-Africanism. Similar accounts reaffirm modernist claims of neutrality and deny the use of modernism as an arm of neo-colonial imperialism. This paper fills this gap by focusing on the role of the Italian national hydrocarbon agency ENI (Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi) and its commercial branch AGIP (Agenzia Italian Petroli) as agents in the production of space. In particular, the paper will focus on early independent Tanzania where Agip built and managed a Motel and over 50 gas stations. Depicted by ENI as the “missing infrastructures” able to spur development and real economic independence, these artifacts were in fact fundamental tools for ENI’s neo-colonial project. While spreading Agip’s corporate identity, they operated as outposts for the conquest of new territories, repeatedly and insistently suggesting an oil-based modernity and a consumerist way of life. Nonetheless, a closer and more engaged observation reveals more nuanced and ambivalent dynamics.
Veranstaltung übernehmen als
iCal