1st Edition
Postcolonial African Cities Imperial Legacies and Postcolonial Predicament
The book focuses on contemporary African cities, caught in the contradiction of an imperial past and postcolonial present. The essays explore the cultural role of colonial architecture and urbanism in the production of meanings: in the inscription of power and discipline, as well as in the dynamic construction of identities. It is in these new dense urban spaces, with all their contradictions, that urban Africans are reworking their local identities, building families, and creating autonomous communities – made fragile by neo-liberal states in a globalizing world.
The book offers a range of scholarly interpretations of the new forms of urbanity. It engages with issues, themes and topics including colonial legacies, postcolonial intersections, cosmopolitan spaces, urban reconfigurations, and migration which are at the heart of the continuing debate about the trajectory of contemporary African cities. The collection discusses contemporary African cities as diverse as Dar Es Salaam, Dakar, Johannesburg, Lagos and Kinshasa – offering new insights into the current state of postcolonial African cities.
This was previously published as a special issue of African Identities.
Imperial Legacies and Post-Colonial Predicament: An Introduction
Fassil Demissie
Metropolitanism, Capital and Patrimony: Theorizing the Postcolonial West African City
Alfred Ndi
Casting a Long Shadow: Colonial Categories, Cultural Identities, and Cosmopolitan Spaces in Globalizing Africa
William Cunningham Bissell
Viewing Post-Colonial Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania Through Civic Spaces: A Question of Class
Anne S. Lewinson
Transforming urban landscapes: Soccer fields as sites of urban sociability in the agglomeration of Dakar
Susann Baller
Narrating The African City From The Diaspora: Lagos As A Trope In Ben Okri and Chika Unigwe’s Short Stories
Ayo Kehinde
The City Beyond the Border: The Urban Worlds Of Duiker, Mpe & Vera
Meg Samuelson
Governing the city? South Africa's struggle to deal with urban immigrants after apartheid
Caroline Kihato
Cinema and The Edgy City: Johannesburg, Carjacking, And The Postmetropolis
Albert Fu and Martin J. Murray
Visual Fragments of Kinshasa
Fassil Demissie
Biography
Fassil Demissie is Associate Professor, DePaul University, USA. He is the editor of African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal, and on the editorial board of African Identities: A Journal of Economics, Culture and Society (both published by Routledge). He recently edited Postcolonial African Cities.