Paper short abstract:

Focusing on the emergence and transformation of the ngo ArchiAfrika, I describe how affect and discordancy problematize ethics of legitimacy and responsibility in the making of scientific knowledge and expertise concerning modern architecture in Africa.

Paper long abstract:

In 2001 a group of five Dutch architects founded the non-governmental-organization ArchiAfrika in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Their initial aim was "to put (modern) African architectural culture on the world map" and to maintain an "international exchange of expertise and knowledge within the African continent" because "the important voice of Africa" is "lacking" or at least "often not enough heard." I have accompanied ArchiAfrika's emergence and transformation in the course of multi-sited fieldwork for my larger PhD research project "Rescuing Modernity: Global Heritage Assemblages and Modern Architecture in Africa." Here, I analyze how ArchiAfrika organizes a workshop and conference in Dar es Salaam with the title "Modern Architecture in East Africa Around Independence." At the event, a certain preoccupation with the notion of an "African" modern architectural heritage causes discordancy and affect among local participants. As a result, ArchiAfrika experiences fundamental normative uncertainty, as well as a crisis of legitimacy and responsibility. Drawing mainly on Steven Shapin's and Paul Rabinow's recent (concept) work, I argue that attempts to reconcile this crisis are at the core of ArchiAfrika's latest reconfigurations, which are supposed to eventually facilitate the ngo's "transfer to Africa." I contend that ArchiAfrika's projected "Africanization" points towards global realities in the contemporary production of scientific knowledge and expertise, in which Africa is (re-)appropriated as a "living laboratory" from abroad.