Full Description
Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis is a pioneering effort to insert South Africa's largest city into urban theory, on its own terms. Johannesburg is Africa's premier metropolis. Yet theories of urbanization have cast it as an emblem of irresolvable crisis, the spatial embodiment of unequal economic relations and segregationist policies, and a city that responds to but does not contribute to modernity on the global scale. Complicating and contesting such characterizations, the contributors to this collection reassess classic theories of metropolitan modernity as they explore the experience of "city-ness" and urban life in post-apartheid South Africa. They portray Johannesburg as a polycentric and international city with a hybrid history that continually permeates the present. Turning its back on rigid rationalities of planning and racial separation, Johannesburg has become a place of intermingling and improvisation, a city that is fast developing its own brand of cosmopolitan culture.The volume's essays include an investigation of representation and self-stylization in the city, an ethnographic examination of friction zones and practices of social reproduction in inner-city Johannesburg, and a discussion of the economic and literary relationship between Johannesburg and Maputo, Mozambique's capital. One contributor considers how Johannesburg's cosmopolitan sociability enabled the anticolonial projects of Mohandas Ghandi and Nelson Mandela. Journalists, artists, architects, writers, and scholars bring contemporary Johannesburg to life in ten short pieces, including reflections on music and megamalls, nightlife, built spaces, and life for foreigners in the city.
Contributors: Arjun Appadurai, Carol A. Breckenridge, Lindsay Bremner, David Bunn, Fred de Vries, Nsizwa Dlamini, Mark Gevisser, Stefan Helgesson, Julia Hornberger, Jonathan Hyslop, Grace Khunou, FrÉdÉric Le Marcis, Xavier Livermon, John Matshikiza, Achille Mbembe, Robert Muponde, Sarah Nuttall, Tom Odhiambo, Achal Prabhala, AbdouMaliq Simone
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Afropolis / Achille Mbembe and Sarah Nuttall 1
1. Aesthetics of Superfluity / Achille Mbembe 37
2. People as Infrastructure / Abdoumaliq Simone 68
3. Stylizing the Self / Sarah Nuttall 91
4. Gandhi, Mandela, and the African Modern / Jonathan Hyslop 119
5. Art Johannesburg and Its Objects / David Bunn 137
6. The Suffering Body of the City / FrÉdÉric Le Marcis 170
7. Literary City / Sarah Nuttall 195
Voice Lines
Instant City / John Matshikiza 221
Soweto Now / Achille Mbembe, Nsizwa Dlamini, and Grace Khunou 239
The Arrivants / Tom Odhiambo and Robert Muponde 248
Johannesburg, Metropolis of Mozambique / Stefan Helgesson 259
Sounds in the City / Xavier Livermon 271
Nocturnal Johannesburg / Julia Hornberger 285
Megamalls, Generic City / Fred De Vries 297
Yeoville Confidential / Achal Prabhala 307
From the Ruins / Mark Gevisser 317
Reframing Township Space / Lindsay Bremner 337
Afterword: The Risk of Johannesburg / Arjun Appadurai and Carol A. Breckenridge 349
Bibliography 355
Contributors 375
Index
