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Documentary evidence: Navigating identity and credibility in Africa’s urban estuaries
African Studies ( IF 0.679 ) Pub Date : 2018-10-31 , DOI: 10.1080/00020184.2018.1540528
Jacob Rasmussen 1 , Alex Wafer 2
Affiliation  

ABSTRACT In this article we argue for closer intellectual attention to the intersection between the unstable materiality of urban spaces on the one hand, and anxieties about the materiality of official documents on the other. Based on initial evidence from two cities in Africa, namely Nairobi and Johannesburg, we have observed that official documents as material objects matters most in precisely those parts of the city where formal state and civil society institutions appears most absent, i.e. those marginal or estuarial urban spaces, characterised by precarity, informality and mobility, where the majority of African urban residents reside. This is because anxieties about credibility, legitimacy and belonging are most acute in precisely these grey spaces. Yet we argue that the preoccupation with the materiality of these documents does not only reflect broader anxieties about inclusion into or exclusion from the wider urban economy. Instead we suggest that the materiality of documents is more deeply implicated into the unstable material conditions which characterise these estuarial spaces. As these estuarial spaces manifest fluid and sometimes illegible forms of policing and social order, so the variable material qualities of documents simultaneously proffers or eschews the credibility of the bearer in particular situations. This ambiguous relationship to absolute status subverts the bio-political pretensions of contemporary institutions of government, but serves as a crucial tactical vocabulary in navigating the precarious and unstable materiality of the contemporary African city. While the evidence presented here is drawn from ethnographic research in two such ‘urban estuaries’, we suggest that these observations might resonate more broadly, and might open up new avenues for thinking about the relationship between the material and the bio-political in Africa.

中文翻译:

文件证据:在非洲城市河口导航身份和可信度

摘要 在本文中,我们主张对一方面城市空间不稳定的物质性与另一方面对官方文件的物质性的焦虑之间的交叉点给予更密切的关注。根据来自非洲两个城市,即内罗毕和约翰内斯堡的初步证据,我们观察到,作为实物的官方文件在城市中最缺乏正式国家和公民社会机构的地区最为重要,即那些边缘或河口的城市以不稳定、非正式和流动性为特征的空间,大多数非洲城市居民居住在那里。这是因为,正是在这些灰色空间中,对可信度、合法性和归属感的焦虑最为严重。然而,我们认为,对这些文件重要性的关注不仅反映了对融入或排除在更广泛的城市经济之外的更广泛的焦虑。相反,我们认为文件的重要性更深地涉及到表征这些河口空间的不稳定物质条件。由于这些河口空间表现出流动的、有时难以辨认的治安和社会秩序形式,因此文件的可变材料质量在特定情况下同时提供或回避了持有者的可信度。这种与绝对地位的模棱两可的关系颠覆了当代政府机构的生命政治自负,但在应对当代非洲城市岌岌可危和不稳定的物质性方面,它是一个关键的战术词汇。
更新日期:2018-10-31
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