Addis Ababa as Modernist Ruin
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3519632 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Elleni Centime Zeleke (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2010 |
| Volume | 33 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 117-135 |
| Publication date | 2010-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Callaloo (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0161-2492 • E-ISSN: 1080-6512 |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/cal.0.0598 |
| OpenAlex | W1967273193 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
Keeping in mind that Addis Ababa translates to mean flower, I want to appropriate some of the sights and sounds of this relatively new city in order to rub it against the land- scape of transformation, and reinscription (modernism), that has characterized Addis Ababa since its founding in the late 1800s (Holston 5). I am particularly interested in Addis Ababa's transition from the Socialist oriented military junta known as the Derg (1974-1991) to a city governed by a post-communist, free market regime. Under the Derg, Scientific Socialism was adopted as the country's method of governance. On the basis of this new method, the military junta introduced across the country—but particularly in Addis Ababa—a public culture of signs and symbols that represented various aspects of the new regime. Monuments to Lenin were erected, as were numerous billboards of Marx, Lenin, and Engels. In 1991, along with all the other countries behind the iron curtain, the military junta fell. The public billboard culture, however, did not disappear; rather the billboards were replaced by ones produced by private companies. I understand Addis Ababa's latest transformation as being more of the same, whereby the city's public space is organized under both regimes with the same aesthetic-politico sensibility—a sensibility that is grounded in a certain ease with both erasure and reinscrip- tion. I also view the very public nature of the billboards under both regimes and the way they have come to dominate the Addis Ababa landscape as serving as a useful heuristic device to get at both the tactics served up to, as well as deployed by, Addis Ababa's resi- dents so as to cope with everyday life
| Citations per year | 0.33 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2011 - 2024 (14) |
| Highly cited | No |