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Europe French Institutional/cultural/religious

Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève: Iron and Knowledge as Materials of Colonization

Henri Labrouste’s Bibliotheque Sainte-Genevieve is a building of conflicting ideas. On its classical stone exterior the names of 810 authors inscribe a catalog of the most prominent philosophers, scientists and authors of the time. Within its walls, these same author’s works are housed amidst a modern forest of skeletal iron and glass. Just as Labrouste’s […]

Categories
Community/urbanism North America Settler colonialism Uncategorized

Cabin at Walden Pond (1845): Performative Dwelling, Freedom Aestheticised, and the Fetishization of Poverty

From July 1845 to September 1857, Henry David Thoreau lived in a small, self-built, single room cabin. It stood beside Walden Pond on the property of Ralph Waldo Emerson, just outside of Concord Massachusetts within the territory of the Pennacook Nation. The structure itself was extremely simple, occupying a ten by fifteen foot footprint with […]

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