Educational Technology in “Savage” Worlds: The Imperial Gaze of Humanitarianism

The book chapter focuses on photographs by official UNESCO photographer Dominique Roger documenting UNESCO initiatives for primary and professional education by radio in the Republics of Upper Volta and Mali at the beginning of the 1970s. It explores how these photographs selected from the photographic archives of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) documented the imperial undercurrents in the organization, which have become increasingly obvious over the years. The chapter critically engages with UNESCO’s quest for humanitarian universalism and looks at photography’s pivotal role therein. UNESCO’s mission in the field of education and technology, “pursued along a predetermined axis of progress” (Azoulay 2019), was perceived as universally valid and generally not seen as overturning local traditions and knowledge. It is argued that the photographs by Dominique Roger were taken with this belief in mind; it was assumed that Western educational technology and knowledge would transform Africa’s Indigenous populations for the better. However, the photographer’s work involuntarily documented the way in which the organization implicitly helped imperial hierarchies and narratives to persist. Both photography as a technology and the photographs’ captions were forceful interventions in Indigenous ways of living. These interventions called for discipline and progress while implicitly contrasting Indigenous populations with Western standards and achievements. The photographs by Dominique Roger constitute a powerful presence that was intended to draw attention to the lack of technology and knowledge, while highlighting the way in which UNESCO successfully introduced radio technology as a means of development.