The ocean and the city

Spatial forgeries of racial capitalism

Dados Bibliográficos

ID4476410
AutoresSharad Chari (0000-0002-8526-5395, University of California, Berkeley, USA; University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, autor correspondente)
Ano2021
Volume39
Fascículo6
Páginas1026-1042
Data de publicação2021-12-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoEnvironment and Planning D Society and Space (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0263-7758 • E-ISSN: 1472-3433
EditoraSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/02637758211030922
OpenAlexW3183840877
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas15
Referências citadas16

This article tries to look beyond what I call the spatial forgeries of racial capitalism in early 20th century Durban, South Africa, a set of renditions of the ocean and the city, to make sense of quite a surprising and relatively unremarked set of events. In a period of racial and xenophobic vitriol, Black subalterns from the Indian Ocean who had lived through harsh periods of indentured labour slowly and concertedly transformed the urban periphery and interstices. I trace three moves through which Indian indentured labour was 'shoaled' on South Africa's racial shores, the way mixed Black populations in the urban periphery and interstices 'built' marginal and interstitial infrastructure to support their communal survival, and the way they literally 'rooted' themselves in place in ways that make Durban distinctive as an 'Indian' city on African shores, in partial complicity with a deepening landscape of racial segregation. What is clear is that these forms of spatial praxis accomplished nothing less than the decisive dissolution of the fantasy of a white city by the Afro-Indian sea. The complexities of this account also offer a cautionary tale with respect to our own desires for spacetimes of marronage to prove 'successful

Art · Capitalism · Complicity · Elite · Fantasy · Nothing · Political science · Politics · Racism · Sociology · White (mutation · African history and culture studies · Gender Studies · History · Law · Philosophy · South African History and Culture · Urban and Rural Development Challenges