Colonialities
Emerging in the 1980s in the English-speaking academic world, postcolonial studies showed that colonisation was not a thing of the past but continued to influence power relations in our societies, cultures and spaces. Today, the adjectives ‘postcolonial’ and ‘decolonial’ are still the subject of debate among experts, which is why AA has adopted the term ‘coloniality’, borrowed from Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano, as the title for its autumn 2025 issue.
Extraction of geological and human resources. Forced displacement. Identity wars on a local and international scale. Examples of this coloniality at work in the news were easily found. Yet, must the world to come inevitably obey these logics of domination? The approaches presented in the following pages refuse this. Neither claiming victimhood nor competing over who bears the greatest guilt or who can pay the grandest homage, they draw on a poetry of memory and identity, spoken by voices that, through creation, art, architecture and history, seek to grasp the immeasurable: relearning to see the earth as more than a resource, ceasing to see the future, or the Other, as spaces to conquer, moving away from hypocritical universalism towards what Édouard Glissant called a ‘poetics of diversity’.
AA 466 ‘Colonialities’, autumn 2025
Now available on our online shop
Au sommaire du numéro
COVER Photo : © Courtesy of the artist and Wilson Saplana Gallery
Inuuteq Storch, Soon Will Summer Be Over, 2023
INTRODUCTION
Poetics of Diversity (read the full article)
Clémentine Roland et Anastasia de Villepin
ARCHITECTURE
Limbo Accra and Studio NEiDA
Round table
PHILOSOPHY
Non-human rights
Paulo Tavares
FASHION
Buzigahill, Return to Sender
HISTORY
The Many Names of Chandigarh
Vikramāditya Prakāsh
ART
Dima Srouji
Anastasia de Villepin
DESIGN
Design Under The Influence
Guillaume Ackel
ARCHITECTURE
ARB Architectes, Đạo Mẫu Museum
Clémentine Roland
CINEMA
Decolonial Film Festival
Christelle Granja
POLITICS
French Overseas Territories
Yvana Aletas
LINGUISTICS
The Lasting Legacy of Creole Languages
Mylène Danglades
PHOTOGRAPHY
Tropical Agronomy Garden of Paris by Luc Boegly
Balqis Tandjaoui
ARCHITECTURE
Theory of Malagasy Architecture
Joan Razafimaharo
ART
Yolŋu Power
Anastasia de Villepin
ARCHITECTURE
Colectivo C733
Clémentine Roland
LAW
Xavier Forde, Māori Rights
Yên Bui
ARCHITECTURE
Taylor & Hinds
SOCIOLOGY
Black Vernacular
bell hooks
But also
A selection of books from Sauramps bookshop; a conversation with architect and designer Michele De Lucchi; a guided tour of the brand new recording studios at Maison de la Radio; an interview with Omar Degan, Somali-Italian architect and founder of the first Pan-African Architecture Biennale; a visit of painter Jean Lurçat’s home and studio, designed by his brother, architect André Lurçat; an exploration of the ‘office’ collections by Alki, the fifty-year-old Basque cooperative specialised in solid oak furniture; AA’s curated selection of furniture and accessories to transform your workspace; an update on the thermal renovation of Émile Aillaud’s Nuages towers, led by RVA architects and a look at the wooden shingle facades and roofs by Swiss company Niki HolzSchindel.
