ABSTRACT This article discusses Gabon’s post-independence state to query prospects for the postcolonial state in Africa. The modernist aspirations of that post-independence era sought to transform Gabonese society through the built environment – architectural design of buildings, layout of roads, landscapes – and attempted to materialise counter-colonial social forms in ways not necessarily reducible to (though certainly in line with) the interests of elites and monopoly capital. As such, the cosmopolitan humanism contained in that that era’s aesthetics of governance lends insights into the possibilities for re-thinking the state in light of subsequent history. Attention to the aesthetics of governance may optimistically open up radical possibilities that transcend governance as mere policy/policing in ways that speak to class, environmentalist, and feminist concerns of past and contemporary political activists.

中文翻译：

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通过加蓬的治理美学重新思考非洲国家

摘要本文讨论加蓬的独立后状态，以查询非洲后殖民状态的前景。独立后时代的现代主义愿望试图通过建筑环境（建筑物的建筑设计，道路布局，景观）改变加蓬社会，并试图以不一定简化的方式来实现反殖民的社会形式（尽管肯定是一致的）与精英阶层的利益和垄断资本。这样，那个时代的治理美学所蕴含的世界性人文主义为人们根据后来的历史重新思考国家的可能性提供了见识。对治理美学的关注可能会乐观地开辟一些根本性的可能性，这些可能性可以超越对治理的理解，而后者仅是与阶级，环保主义者，