Achille Mbembe, Sarah Nuttall, Lindsay Bremner, Rita Barnard at Slought Foundation:
The Invention of Johannesburg [mp3]
“In many senses, there is no metropolis without a necropolis. Just as the metropolis is closely linked to monuments, artifacts, technological novelty, an architecture of light and advertising, the phantasmagoria of selling, and a cornucopia of commodities, so is it produced by what lies below the surface. In the case of Johannesburg, the underground is not simply a technological space emptied of social relations. It does not exist only in an abstract realm of instrumentality and efficiency. In fact, it always was a space of suffering and alienation as well as of rebellion and insurrection. The French equation between underground space and revolution or insurrection (the dream of radical equality evidenced in the signifier of the Catacombs) holds in the case of Johannesburg. [...] Johannesburg clearly shows that one of the characteristic features of a metropolis is an underneath. [...] The underground is not to be understood simply in terms of an infrastructure and various subterranean spaces (sewers and drainage systems, underground railways, utility tunnels, storage vaults and so on). The world below (the underworld) is also made up of lower classes, the trash heap of the world above, and subterranean utopias. Like the nineteenth-century European city, the vertical and racial segmentation of the Johannesburg urban world was given structure and order by what it relegated beneath. As far as Johannesburg is concerned, more than the surfaces of the vertical city with its skyscrapers, the underground seems to hold the keys to unlocking the secrets of its modernity.”
- Achille Mbembe and Sarah Nuttall, “Introduction: Afropolis,” Johannesburg: the elusive metropolis (2008) [more at slought.org]
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i really wanted to attend this lecture in person, but alas classes got in the way. for those who know my work, Mbembe’s writings really influenced me, especially for eGoli, 2008. not to mention the invaluable one-on-one critique i got with the generous Lindsay Bremner, who took time off just to speak to me about the piece, as additional input from a ‘non-fine arts’ and slightly more theoretical point of view.
