Description
This paper uses the lens of popular perceptions about the architecture of the African Union (AU) headquarters building in Addis Ababa to understand the articulation of Pan-African collective identity. It reflects upon the ways in which the physical structure of the building is talked about, used as a reference, and assumed symbolic signification in popular consciousness, and the way in which these enable the contestation and consolidation of Pan-African identities. In so doing it illustrates how transnational political imaginations are mediated by the material experiences of different social actors. Bringing ethnographic work on materiality into dialogue with the literature on pan-Africanism, the paper aims to contribute towards a new approach to the study of the links between African regional organisations and the production of transnational collective subjectivity.
