Suchergebnisse

This article reflects on Histórias do Kakwaku, a documentary film about social activism in the urban margins of Luanda, produced as part of a partnership between myself, an academic working on urban citizenship, and an Angolan political youth organisation, Projecto AGIR. The article details the whole process of collective film-making and questions the impact of this method on the film-makers, both individually and collectively. From our initial brainstorming sessions to our final editing decisions on the computer, I show how we slowly drifted away from the initial political objectives dictated by the organisers of Projecto Agir and opened unexpected spaces for engagement that allowed us 'to see together without claiming to be another' (Haraway 1991).
Following the chronological steps of collective film-making, we used practice as a point of departure from which to approach storytelling more broadly. Although I provide practical details about our logistics, our equipment and our working documents, this is not a one-size-fits-all recipe for collective documentary film-making. Rather, the focus is on what can be described as an exercise in intersubjective writing, neither entirely under control nor totally serendipitous.
I argue that telling a story in images, words and sounds is a dynamic process, open to constant reinterpretation. Combining the unpredictability of collective writing with the somewhat narrow imperatives of audiovisual storytelling creates an opportunity to question participatory research beyond the binary of the researcher and the researched.

International audience ; Since its inauguration in 2011, the New City of Kilamba has become one of the most emblematic examples of the Chinese-funded spectacle of reconstruction in postwar Angola. Its tabula rasa urban paradigm has been widely criticised by housing experts in and out of Angola but little is known of its reception by the general population in Luanda. This article retraces the incremental appropriation of Kilamba City by its residents in order to question how the occupation of a new city shapes the relationship between ordinary city-dwellers and the state. Based on direct observation in Luanda and media monitoring since 2011, the article unveils a multi-faceted reality where residents express at the same time pride and preoccupation, satisfaction and uncertainty. It uses Henri Lefebvre's notion of 'production of space' to suggest that the conundrums of the new city could contribute to the emergence of a democratic moment in Angola.

International audience ; Since its inauguration in 2011, the New City of Kilamba has become one of the most emblematic examples of the Chinese-funded spectacle of reconstruction in postwar Angola. Its tabula rasa urban paradigm has been widely criticised by housing experts in and out of Angola but little is known of its reception by the general population in Luanda. This article retraces the incremental appropriation of Kilamba City by its residents in order to question how the occupation of a new city shapes the relationship between ordinary city-dwellers and the state. Based on direct observation in Luanda and media monitoring since 2011, the article unveils a multi-faceted reality where residents express at the same time pride and preoccupation, satisfaction and uncertainty. It uses Henri Lefebvre's notion of 'production of space' to suggest that the conundrums of the new city could contribute to the emergence of a democratic moment in Angola.

Fondé sur un travail d'immersion ethnographique à Luanda et sur une analyse de la culture populaire urbaine, cet article interroge la réception des musiques actuelles par la jeunesse luandaise. Il part d'un fait d'actualité : en juin 2015, quinze jeunes activistes qui débattaient des principes de résistance pacifique ont été arrêtés et accusés de préparer un coup d'État. L'article défend l'idée que ces arrestations sont emblématiques des mécanismes de domination du parti au pouvoir et surtout de leur ambivalence. Sans annoncer la fin du régime autoritaire en Angola, l'émergence d'une scène musicale underground , depuis la fin de la guerre civile, illustre en effet les contradictions d'un système hégémonique qui, pour entretenir le consentement populaire, ouvre malgré lui des espaces de contestation qui redéfinissent l'espace public angolais depuis la chute des prix du pétrole en 2014.

International audience ; Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Luanda and on an analysis of urban culture, this paper questions the reception of popular music amongst Luanda's youth nowadays. It starts off from a recent piece of news: in June 2015, fifteen young activists were arrested and accused of preparing a coup against the president after debating principles of pacific resistance. The paper suggests that these arrests are symptomatic of the mechanisms of domination used by the ruling party and above all of their ambivalence. Without predicting the end of Angola's authoritarian regime, the emergence of a musical underground since the end of the civil war illustrates the contradictions of an hegemonic system, which, in order to maintain popular consent, opens new spaces of contestation that are reshaping the Angolan public sphere, especially since the drop in oil prices that started in 2014. ; Fondé sur un travail d'immersion ethnographique à Luanda et sur une analyse de la culture populaire urbaine, cet article interroge la réception des musiques actuelles par la jeunesse luandaise. Il part d'un fait d'actualité : en juin 2015, quinze jeunes activistes qui débattaient des principes de résistance pacifique ont été arrêtés et accusés de préparer un coup d'État. L'article défend l'idée que ces arrestations sont emblématiques des mécanismes de domination du parti au pouvoir et surtout de leur ambivalence. Sans annoncer la fin du régime autoritaire en Angola, l'émergence d'une scène musicale underground, depuis la fin de la guerre civile, illustre en effet les contradictions d'un système hégémonique qui, pour entretenir le consentement populaire, ouvre malgré lui des espaces de contestation qui redéfinissent l'espace public angolais depuis la chute des prix du pétrole en 2014.

International audience ; Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Luanda and on an analysis of urban culture, this paper questions the reception of popular music amongst Luanda's youth nowadays. It starts off from a recent piece of news: in June 2015, fifteen young activists were arrested and accused of preparing a coup against the president after debating principles of pacific resistance. The paper suggests that these arrests are symptomatic of the mechanisms of domination used by the ruling party and above all of their ambivalence. Without predicting the end of Angola's authoritarian regime, the emergence of a musical underground since the end of the civil war illustrates the contradictions of an hegemonic system, which, in order to maintain popular consent, opens new spaces of contestation that are reshaping the Angolan public sphere, especially since the drop in oil prices that started in 2014. ; Fondé sur un travail d'immersion ethnographique à Luanda et sur une analyse de la culture populaire urbaine, cet article interroge la réception des musiques actuelles par la jeunesse luandaise. Il part d'un fait d'actualité : en juin 2015, quinze jeunes activistes qui débattaient des principes de résistance pacifique ont été arrêtés et accusés de préparer un coup d'État. L'article défend l'idée que ces arrestations sont emblématiques des mécanismes de domination du parti au pouvoir et surtout de leur ambivalence. Sans annoncer la fin du régime autoritaire en Angola, l'émergence d'une scène musicale underground, depuis la fin de la guerre civile, illustre en effet les contradictions d'un système hégémonique qui, pour entretenir le consentement populaire, ouvre malgré lui des espaces de contestation qui redéfinissent l'espace public angolais depuis la chute des prix du pétrole en 2014.

International audience ; Cape Town, the first capital of South Africa, was built on spatial injustice. First a Dutch trading post on the Route to India, then a British colony and the seat of Parliament under apartheid, the Mother City has been deeply marked by racism. In 1994, Nelson Mandela's election symbolised the abolition of State racism, but the political declarations concerning the break with the past were far from meaning the eradication of prejudices and memories of spatially engraved violence. Based on video interviews presenting the life trajectories of three township residents, this article exposes the escape routes along which the urban identities of Capetonians removed by force under apartheid are shaped. Their personal memories take on the form of a founding myth marked by a highlighted martyred experience, while trying to make sense of their daily lives through symbolic places and socio-religious imagination challenging " the order of things ". As such, the notion of heterotopia can describe the parallel worlds in which urbanites take refuge, in order to invent an alternative order enabling them to overcome the marks of domination on a day to day basis.

International audience ; Le Cap, première capitale de l'Afrique du Sud s'est construite sur des injustices spatiales caricaturales. Comptoir hollandais sur la Route des Indes, colonie britannique puis siège du parlement sous l'apartheid, la ville est profondément marquée par le racisme. En 1994, l'élection de Nelson Mandela a symbolisé l'abolition de ce racisme d'Etat mais les déclarations politiques de rupture avec le passé sont loin de signifier l'éradication des préjugés et des souvenirs de la violence physiquement gravée dans l'espace. A partir d'interviews vidéos présentant les itinéraires de trois habitants des townships, l'article montre les « lignes de fuite » le long desquelles s'élaborent les identités citadines de ceux qui ont subi les déménagements forcés au Cap sous l'apartheid. Leurs souvenirs personnels prennent la forme d'un mythe fondateur marqué par une valorisation d'une expérience martyre tandis que leur vie quotidienne prend sens à travers des lieux symboliques et des imaginaires socio-religieux qui concurrencent « l'ordre des choses ». La notion d'hétérotopie peut ainsi permettre de décrire les mondes parallèles dans lesquels les citadins se réfugient pour inventer un ordre alternatif leur permettant de surmonter les marques de la domination au jour le jour.

International audience ; Cape Town, the first capital of South Africa, was built on spatial injustice. First a Dutch trading post on the Route to India, then a British colony and the seat of Parliament under apartheid, the Mother City has been deeply marked by racism. In 1994, Nelson Mandela's election symbolised the abolition of State racism, but the political declarations concerning the break with the past were far from meaning the eradication of prejudices and memories of spatially engraved violence. Based on video interviews presenting the life trajectories of three township residents, this article exposes the escape routes along which the urban identities of Capetonians removed by force under apartheid are shaped. Their personal memories take on the form of a founding myth marked by a highlighted martyred experience, while trying to make sense of their daily lives through symbolic places and socio-religious imagination challenging " the order of things ". As such, the notion of heterotopia can describe the parallel worlds in which urbanites take refuge, in order to invent an alternative order enabling them to overcome the marks of domination on a day to day basis.

International audience ; Le Cap, première capitale de l'Afrique du Sud s'est construite sur des injustices spatiales caricaturales. Comptoir hollandais sur la Route des Indes, colonie britannique puis siège du parlement sous l'apartheid, la ville est profondément marquée par le racisme. En 1994, l'élection de Nelson Mandela a symbolisé l'abolition de ce racisme d'Etat mais les déclarations politiques de rupture avec le passé sont loin de signifier l'éradication des préjugés et des souvenirs de la violence physiquement gravée dans l'espace. A partir d'interviews vidéos présentant les itinéraires de trois habitants des townships, l'article montre les « lignes de fuite » le long desquelles s'élaborent les identités citadines de ceux qui ont subi les déménagements forcés au Cap sous l'apartheid. Leurs souvenirs personnels prennent la forme d'un mythe fondateur marqué par une valorisation d'une expérience martyre tandis que leur vie quotidienne prend sens à travers des lieux symboliques et des imaginaires socio-religieux qui concurrencent « l'ordre des choses ». La notion d'hétérotopie peut ainsi permettre de décrire les mondes parallèles dans lesquels les citadins se réfugient pour inventer un ordre alternatif leur permettant de surmonter les marques de la domination au jour le jour.

This article considers the ways in which sub-councils 'bring government closer to the people' by creating an intermediary level between local wards and the metropolitan council in Cape Town. Daily encounters between administrative staff, elected representatives and local communities within an impoverished formerly 'black' area demonstrate the intricacy of interactions and relationships between governing strategies from above and the tactics of the governed from below. Beyond conflicting objectives and rationalities, I argue that citizenship may be defined as a constant negotiation of legitimacy between stakeholders, never definitely trapped 'below' or 'above' the actual challenges of the city.