African Postmodernism or Colonial-Modern Mimicry: Tracing the Postcolonial Trajectory of Sudano-Sahelian Architecture in Mali

The vernacular mud-brick architectures of the Western Sahel region attest to a long history of exchange between indigenous African and Islamic building traditions driven by Trans-Saharan trade. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, French colonial occupation forced the homogenisation of these architectures into an aesthetic style known as “Sudanese” and its modern manifestation, “Neo-Sudanese,” to further colonial rule both on African soil and abroad. Postmodern iterations of this architectural tradition have taken form in the postcolonial African landscape, which prompts an interrogation of postmodernism’s ability to truly transcend colonialism, modernism, or the colonial modern, and to live up to the monumental rupture it had envisioned. This essay highlights the limitations of these postmodern architectures in postcolonial Mali, particularly along the axis of architectural style.