Samia Henni, “Colonial Toxicity: Rehearsing French Radioactive Architecture and Landscape in the Sahara”

This lecture discusses the making of Samia Henni’s publication Colonial Toxicity: Rehearsing French Radioactive Architecture and Landscape in the Sahara (2024), which brings together nearly six hundred pages of materials documenting the violent history of France’s nuclear bomb program in the Algerian desert. Meticulously culled from across available, offered, contraband, and leaked sources, the book is a rich repository for all those concerned with spatial histories of nuclear weapons and engaged at the intersections of spatial, social, and environmental justice, as well as anticolonial archival practices.

“Colonial Toxicity: Rehearsing French Radioactive Architecture and Landscape in the Sahara” is presented as part of e-flux Architecture Lectures, a monthly series inviting researchers and practitioners to discuss timely issues in contemporary architecture, theory, culture, and technology.

For more information, contact program [​at​] e-flux.com.

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