Following on the heels of the first African Cities Reader, the African Centre for Cities and Chimurenga Magazine are proud to announce the call for proposals for the 2010 Reader. 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. Submissions will be accepted until Wednesday, 31st March 2010. Read full details below:
AFRICAN CITIES READER II: Mobilities & Fixtures
Call for Submissions 2010
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 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 cafés 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 Wednesday, 31st March 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.
Explore the first African Cities Reader at: www.africancitiesreader.org.za
For further information contact: Jennifer Bryant
[e-mail]
T) +27(21)4224168
www.chimurenga.co.za
www.africancentreforcities.net
Editors: Edgar Pieterse & Ntone Edjabe
