COLONIAL TOXICITY | By Samia Henni
The lecture discusses Samia Henni’s research on the French nuclear weapons testing programme (1960–1966) in the Algerian Sahara, which unfolded in three public outcomes: a series of translations of testimonies of nuclear victims, a traveling exhibition “Performing Colonial Toxicity,” and a published book, titled Colonial Toxicity: Rehearsing French Radioactive Architecture and Landscape in the Sahara. Whereas the traveling exhibition is an immersive multimedia installation presenting an assemblage of materials that trace and name the spatial, atmospheric, and geological impacts of France’s atomic bombs in the Sahara, the printed manuscriptbrings together nearly six hundred pages of materials documenting the intersections of spatial, social and environmental justice.
Samia Henniis a historian and an exhibition maker of the built, destroyed and imagined environments.
She is the author of the multi-award winning books Architecture of Counterrevolution: The French Army in Northern Algeria (2017, 2022, EN; 2019, FR), and Colonial Toxicity: Rehearsing French Radioactive Architecture and Landscape in the Sahara (2024, 2025, EN; 2026, FR); and the editor ofDeserts Are Not Empty(2022, 2025, EN; 2024, IT) and War Zones(2018).
Speaker: SAMIA HENNI
Discussant: IAIN CHAMBERS
Chaired by: DANIELA GIUDICI
The meeting is part of the Beyond Inhabitation Lab seminar series Spring 2026.
The Beyond Inhabitation Lab provides an infrastructure to facilitate a process of collective study around the shifting terrain and politics of inhabitation globally, and is directed by Michele Lancione and AbdouMaliq Simone.
- To participate in person or online, you must register at this link
- More info Beyond Inhabitation Lab seminar series Spring 2026 at link Events – Beyond Inhabitation
(624 KB)