Paper short abstract

This paper explores various representations of Asmara including those posted online by Eritreans and Eritreans in diaspora to reveal the ways the city of Asmara serves as a terrain for exploring and constructing Eritrean past and futures.

Paper long abstract

Asmara is often viewed by Europeans through the lens of an aesthetic nostalgia that casts the city as a time capsule where exemplars of the architectural style of Italian fascism are preserved. To Eritreans, however, Asmara means something very different. This paper explores representations of Asmara posted online by Eritreans and Eritreans in diaspora. These images and texts reveal the ways the city of Asmara serves as a terrain for exploring and constructing Eritrean futures. The city comes to stand in for Eritrea, notably an Eritrea of potential and emergence rather than one set in stone. Asmara is much more than her buildings. Online the city is described in terms of a dynamic Eritrean culture, the construction of Eritrean cosmopolitanism, and the possibilities of new social formations and new kinds of belonging. The ambiguities of location that are present in diaspora and in cyberspace contribute to the construction of Asmara as a symbol of Eritrea and as a space of civic imaginary where possible Eritrean futures might be built.