African Cities Reader I: Pan-African Practices

The African Cities Reader, an annual compendium of writing and art from multiple genres, forms of representation, and points of view, embodies and reflects the rich pluralism, cosmopolitanism and diversity of emergent urbanisms across Africa. The first installment of the Reader brings together contributors from across Africa and the Diaspora to challenge, examine and critique the prevailing depiction of urban life on the continent. The theme, Pan-African Practices, is explored from multiple vantage points to produce a fresh look at the trajectories and interiorities of the urban African experience.

In the launch issue Rustum Kozain muses over the cultural and alternative relations built, negotiations and dealings made as a resident of Cape Town (South Africa); Jean-Christophe Lanquetin's SAPE Project is captured in a pictorial narrative; Gabeba Baderoon and Karen Press poetically expound on the daily traversing of the personal and the (institutional) impersonal; James Yuma investigates the intersection between religion and national narrative in the Democratic Republic of the Congo whilst Valentine Cascarino asks how would a recontextualisation of Kinshasha in Johannesburg (South Africa) fare?; Annie Paul explores the practice of death and burial rituals in postcolonial Jamaica; and Vyjayanthi Rao, Filip de Boeck and Abdou Maliq Simone discuss Kinshasa's Invisible City and other African cities.

Other contributors include Chris Abani, Akin Adesokan, Leslie Lokko, Achal Prabhala, Allan Kolski Horwitz, Marcus Neustetter, Jyoti Mistry, Rustum Kozain, and Ashraf Jamal amongst others.

The African Cities Reader is a collaboration between the Africa Center for Cities and Chimurenga. The African Cities Reader was edited by Ntone Edjabe and Edgar Pieterse.

Read it online here or get a copy of the print edition from Chimurenga:

Title: African Cities Reader
ISBN number: 0-9814272-8-7
Text: English
Editors: Ntone Edjabe and Edgar Pieterse
Publishing year: April 2010
Price*: ZAR250; USD35; EURO25
* Price amounts exclude shipping costs

Soft cover, black
Inside black; 4 pages full colour

Call for submissions for the AFRICAN CITIES READER II: Mobilities & Fixtures

Deadline: April 30, 2010.

en français

Following on the heels of the first African Cities Reader, we remain as convinced as ever that the youthful demographic, informality and non-conventional insertion in global circuits by African urbanites is a starting point for a sustained engagement and retelling of the city in contemporary Africa. The cultural, livelihood, religious, stylistic, commercial, familial, knowledge producing and navigational capacities of African urbanites are typically overlooked, unappreciated and undervalued. The aim of the African Cities Reader is to bring their stories and practices to the fore. The Reader seeks to become a forum where Africans tell their own stories, draw their own maps and represent their own spatial topographies as it continuous to evolve and adapt at the interstice of difference, complexity, opportunism, and irony.

The second instalment is organised around the theme: "Mobilities and Fixtures". It seems apparent to us that African cities are quintessentially defined by incessant mobilities. And as people make their way in cities that are incapable of dealing with their presence, they continuously come to terms with the fact that the way of the city is a game of hide-and-seek... nothing is easily navigable; little is what it seems at first sight; and urban life becomes centred on a capacity to read the street, faces, gestures, ambience, odours, noises, danger and of course, most importantly, opportunity. Discernment demands a capacity to stay on the move, in circulation, whether by foot, rumour, sms or insertion into multiple social networks. It is therefore possible to access and explore the phenomenology of the African city through perceptive pieces that account for these dynamics.

One line of exploration could be modes of mobility (and mobilisation); i.e. the chaotic jostling for road space by the ubiquitous minibus taxis that insist that cities and streetscapes mould themselves to their convenience. However, apart from providing a unique visual and movement dynamic of African cities, these coffins of the road carry underexplored social practices and cultures within them. Work that can open up these restless capsules of the contemporary city are called for. However, the terminus points where a lot of waiting and tedium rankle, is as significant to understand as the unique trajectories and interiorities of the taxis. In fact, it is probably possible to map and spatialise the public cultures associated with mini-agglomerations that cluster at transport interchanges and the larger network-grid of public spheres that aggregate through the networks between these spaces.

It would be misplaced to focus all mobility and stationary attention on taxi ranks and routes. Airports, border posts, smuggle routes, road-blocks, potholes and other technologies of regulation, control, blocking and re-routing are certainly as important since transurban migration across within and across national territories is as constitutive of the contemporary city. Of course, all of these conventional modalities of circulation and capture are now thoroughly overlaid, maybe even superseded, by virtual mobilities, whether it be via internet cafes or mobile telephony. Since all technologies are always imbricated by culture and desire, we are keen to learn about accounts that can illuminate how these dynamics resonate in African cities. What kinds of time and speeds mark these practices? What are the new social and built ecologies that arise from the investment in constant mobility, both practical and imaginary. What are the efforts and rationalities invoked to navigate the obstacles to movement and circulation? And how do we mark and name the politics that underpin these ever-shifting and underwhelming particularities?

Moving from this exploratory vantage point, the African Cities Reader remains open to multiple genres (literature, philosophy, faction, reportage, ethnographic narrative, etc), forms of representation (text, image, sound and possibly performance), and points of view. The African Cities Reader insists on embodying the rich pluralism, cosmopolitanism and diversity of emergent urbanisms across Africa. Thus, the Reader invites and undertake to commission writing and art by practitioners, academics, activists and artists from diverse fields across Africa in all of her expansiveness.

Submissions will be accepted until April 30,2010 and should be submitted electronically in Word format and low-res jpg to the email address below. Submissions may vary in subject matter and will be assessed on their relevance to theme. All work should accompany a short abstract, biography and relevant contact details.

For further information contact:

Jennifer Bryant
africancitiesreader@chimurenga.co.za
T) +27(21)4224168
www.chimurenga.co.za
www.africancentreforcities.net