Bjørn Enge Bertelsen: Speculation against detachment and futureless-ness. Alternatives to enclaving in Maputo

Ataya: HUMA Interdisciplinary Seminar Series

Speaker: BjØrn Enge Bertelsen, University of Bergen

Bio: Bjørn Enge Bertelsen is a professor in the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Bergen. He has conducted multiple fieldworks in Mozambique since 1998, researching political anthropology, violence, war and urban Africa. Recent publications include the monograph Violent Becomings: State Formation, Sociality, and Power in Mozambique (2016) and the edited works Crisis of the State: War and Social Upheaval (with Bruce Kapferer, 2009); Navigating Colonial Orders: Norwegian Entrepreneurship in Africa and Oceania, ca. 1850 to 1950 (with Kirsten Kjerland, 2015); Violent Reverberations: Global Modalities of Trauma (with Vigdis Broch-Due, 2016). He publishes regularly in journals such as Social Anthropology, Ethnos, Journal of Southern African Studies, Urban Studies and Social Analysis.

Topic: Dire inequalities characterizing global cities are often described as resulting from structural or neoliberal violence and anthropological analyses typically depict disparate patterns of exclusion, dehumanization and violence—not least around urban patterns of enclaving. Even though such analyses are crucial it is, we argue, a key concern for studies of Africa also to identify urban practices oriented around forms of care, empathy and mutuality that we see as key forms of negotiating intimacy and detachment. Here we explore such practices in Maputo mainly in the guise of texts adorning both crowded minibuses and privately-owned cars. While often leading to laughter, comments, or discussions among passengers as well as passersby, these ambulating names, slogans, or warnings are also acknowledged to communicate aspirations for novel forms of sociality, an attack on inter-human separation and lack of empathy, and, finally, an expression of a desire to generate affective rooms for love, care and mutuality. By mapping the visually affective drawing, particularly on the works of Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon and AbdouMaliq Simone, we make two arguments: First, we argue for the anthropological usefulness of generating understandings of African urban spaces which evade single-mindedly emphasiszing ever-increasing dynamics of atomization of collectives or which project necropolitics as being the hegemonic urban end all and be all. Second, we show how temporality, including descriptions projecting the end of the future, is actively and critically engaged by this type of textual and interpretative practice..

How Ataya works: One presenter and their work – in exchange with the audience. Each Ataya session engages with selected work by the presenter (a text, artwork, performance, even food). The presenter introduces their work and grounds the subsequent discussion with the participants. For best engagement, we recommend participants to view the work (made available in advance on our website) before the session.