Massimo Repetti

Marking  Dakar: A Topography of the Imaginary
 
 
 

translated  by Deirdre Kantz
 
 
 

This page, dedicated to some murals and narrative practices in a world where the flow of images continuously links numerous centers and numerous peripheries, will focus on the residents of Dakar (Senegal).

They have had to cope with anxieties caused  by a difficult assimilation as "outsiders" in an uneasy urban context, and they have formed their social identity through a transitional status.

This page also offers the opportunity to explore how the “Others” (which is something we usually do when we deal with Africa) produce artifacts – originating from their social background – which encompass global cultural suggestions and local knowledge, for their own purposes.
 
 

Dakar as an "Imagined Space"

The Dakar Conurbation, comprising the three Departments of Dakar, Pikine and Rufisque, is the result of the expansion of the original nucleus (the "Plateau") towards the peninsula of Cap-Vert. The ensuing enlargements form the Department of Dakar, composed of 24 districts with different structures.

A few images can give the tone of the social and spatial configuration of Dakar: the population density (an average of 1800 inhabitants/Kmq, out of a total population of about 2,248,000); the presence of parasite installations that "shadow" every district by using its infrastructures (streets, public transport, shops, water supply, sewerage, electricity); the coexistence of a "European" zone (Plateau, Point E, Fann, HLM districts) with reinforced concrete buildings, with an "African" zone (Grand Yoff, Pikine, Grand Dakar etc.) where two-floor concessions (Wolof: keur) represent an environment of "infra-urban" villages, fragmented into groups of neighborhood concessions, the so-called sousquartier.

Operating under these conditions Dakar residents develop a “local savvy” of belonging to a district and a sousquartier, through a “topographical writing” based on elements of the urban landscape (pavements, street corners, squares, gardens, alleys).

By means of deliberate practices of mapping and explicative narrative practices, the town-dwellers constitute a "topography of the imaginary" where the symbolic delimitation of the space derives from a sense of affiliation to the territory. Therefore it is possible to interpret urban spaces as a function of awareness of belonging.

Narrative practices are the first sign of cultural investment in the territory. A shared accumulation of oral traditions based on the district is spread among the residents and is virtually unknown outside the borders of the district. The following story concerns the Fass district called "HLM Mouss" :
 

 "The elders of the district have always told me that once a cat enters a house it can cause havoc. A pregnant woman had a miscarriage. Chased with sticks a cat entered a house. The chasers found a woman in the kitchen instead of the cat. These young people beat the woman to death alleging she was a witch. For this reason my district is now called HLM "angle Mouss" (French and Wolof: "corner cat" – a blend of French and Wolof is very common in Dakar) instead of HLM 6. Actually, there are plenty of cats in my district."

This is a local explanation of the district name.
It all sounds plain and straightforward, however if two versions of an oral tradition are taken into consideration, a very common occurrence, things become more complicated:
 

 "People say that one night a young man was frightened by a cat. After a few moments of fear and indecision, the young man started to chase the cat. With a swift movement, he grabbed the animal’s tail and cut a piece off it. The following morning, a woman, one of his  neighbors, knocked at his door asking him to give back her scarf..."

...the tale continues, however it is less important to relate the whole story (seeing as I have no intention of investigating its variations), than to underline the fact that an oral tradition may not be consistent; there is no absolute "truth", not even for these people.

There is another reason. As in mythical tales, these narrative practices require acceptance by consensus. And, as the myth, these kinds of narrative practices have a symbolic effectiveness, because they express a shared, local knowledge that works as a sign of identity.

Oral tradition is equal to the district like the mythical tales are equal to lineage and clan because – oscillating between the fictional and the rational order of the world – they "work" as "meaningful structures" that reflect and explain cultural antinomies. The latter originate from a context of forced proximity of groups of town dwellers with different backgrounds and different cultural traditions.

Dakar “on the walls”

But the most ostentatious display of an imaginary rearrangement of urban spaces  is "on the walls". The abundance of spontaneous murals helps to  detect the residents’ creativity and involvement in the phenomena of collective adhesion.

The starting point was the "Set-Setal" campaign of urban decoration launched by the Municipalité of Dakar in 1992. Among the themes chosen by the painters was the struggle against AIDS: "Sida, le nouveau combat" ("Aids, the new struggle"), the development of health care at home (see picture “1”), the respect of the environment (see picture “2”) and other relevant social issues (see picture “3”).
 
 

1.
 

2.

3.

Nowadays the residents continue to paint a great number of walls with didactical, devotional or merely decorative subjects, expressing an original popular urban culture. Thus, imagination has broken away from its expressive frame of art, myth, and ritual – which is the domain of charismatic individuals and specialists – and has become a part of the everyday life and practices of ordinary people, who were normally excluded.

Looking at details of murals in Dakar, a complex montage appears as  both the local and mass-mediated culture are taken into consideration. Current global processes of communication in a world which is increasingly culturally hybrid lead to a continuous transfer of images and models: Mami Wata and Disney's imagery (see pictures “4”and "5"), Muslim saints (like Amadu Bamba) (see picture “6”; and "http://www.fmch.ucla.edu/passporttoparadise.htm"), in front of Bill Clinton and Che Guevara, and François Mitterand (see picture “7”) next to the  heroes of the colonial resistance. Nelson Mandela, popular and close to the man of the street, is often represented; musicians like Bob Marley and Chiekh Lo have their space too. Like an enlargement lens, these murals express the concerns and the interests of Modern African people: music, soccer, AIDS, Islam, and democracy.

This is due to the fact that space recalls the imaginary, enabling the "revival of our depths" “réanimer en nous des profondeurs”, as Bachelard wrote.

 

4

5.

6.

7.

 
 

Sometimes the traditional culture is elaborated in order to express symbolic functional references for the expectations of the inhabitants.  Friendship and harmony are represented by Nakk the Goat and Bouki the Hyena, antagonists in traditional tales, they become friends playing soccer with the Lion as referee in a mural (see picture “8”). Thus they become a symbol of peace. The request for a brighter district is expressed by paintings and by organizing public spaces (pavements, public gardens) into rectangular patterns. The straight line and the right angle, made with stones and tires painted in blue and white (see picture “9”)., evoke an oasis which represents cleanliness and order. In the same manner, in another mural, the geometric alignment of the concessions express the concern for the disinfecting and the cleaning of the lived in spaces (see picture “10”). This "imaginary" restoration of the city makes the district of residence an "imagined" space.
Nevertheless, like messages in a bottle, the graffitis are ephemeral: products of their age and their cities, these fragile images are not exempt from the assaults of time and pollution.

8.
 

9.
 

10.

Dakar as a Space of Socialization

As previously mentioned the Municipalité of Dakar assigned the implementation of the "Set-Setal" ("renewal": Set in Wolof means "clean" and Setal "making clean"), to associations and local artists. This decorative campaign of social education was given subsidies to decorate town areas with murals.

The anthropological interest of an artistic popular production lies in its spontaneity. However, when officialdom interferes by giving help and support, a contradiction occurs and brings about a swift breakdown of the initiative.

Nevertheless in the "Set-Setal" case, from the beginning, the campaign was managed by the Municipality, but the members of the district associations continued to represent the urban space by means of deliberate and explicative practices of mapping (see picture “11”).

11.

My aim is to offer a straightforward explanation of this phenomenon.
The narrative practices, the murals and the making and remaking of urban public spaces are forms of communication where the aesthetic dimension prevails together with the social techniques for the local individual to be admitted to a locality.

Such “meaningful structures” must be commented on according to the social conditions of implementation: migration and fellowship.

Each year, about 20,000 people come from the countryside, yet Dakar appears to be undergoing a deep crisis. As in other cities in developing countries, unemployment hits the urban population the hardest.  More often than not, entry into Dakar, where settlement is disproportionate to the available resources, is synonymous with economic difficulties and social outcasting.

In the popular districts, characterized by the great mobility of the residents, the population is heterogeneous. However, it shares the same needs and aspirations of urban integration: mutual aid, housing, and work.

In this type of urban environment and difficult economic context (as is for example illustrated by the low income and the high unemployment rate: 28.4% in 1996) most people must cope with uncertainties.

Moreover, the forced proximity of heterogeneous cultural groups – caused by successive urban settlements and major migratory flows – encourages the fragmentation of the mbokk (the polygamous extended family), and the weakening of its supportive functions, and imposes a modification of the social traditional relationships. A lively social exchange feeds a "district sociability" that strengthens relations of mutual assistance among the residents of the sousquartier.

At a microsocial level Dakar’s urban spaces support numerous associative organizations, which set up relations of practical co-operation and mutual solidarity by binding people with the ties that arise out of belonging to the same family, ethnic group, religion or business.

 The mutual-aid societies tontines, natt and mbootay as well as the neo-tribalism of the AVD (the Village Development Association) and the Islamic associations (Islamic brotherhoods) provide answers to crises and uncertainties by creating a space full of mutual support and assistance that form a secure social context (further readings on my paper "http://www.3e14.com/smr/dakar/access.htm").

The new towndwellers and the young of the districts take up positions among themselves and vis-à-vis the environment, with the use of a wealth of common knowledge which concerns a sense of belonging. They define their space by surrounding it with an ideal cultural border. The shared knowledge of folklore is a kind of “closed shop knowledge”  - a form of local awareness that excludes non residents or recent immigrants. This clear cut border can be overcome by continuous social interaction and by sharing the intellectual investment of the district culture, as well as the integration with the residents on the basis of a common belonging to local groups (Association de Quartier, neighborhood associations: mbaxaal, tontines).

The traditional ngel (in Wolof "meeting place"), at present is the koin, in the modern context where the road has surrounded the pentch (the traditional tree of the palabre). The koin is a meeting point in a corner of the district. It can also be the room "suddu" for the unmarried migrants from the Fulbe and Soninke villages.

The production of an identity discourse through fellowship practices represents the social foundation of an urban artistic production.

Since the signs denote the spaces and underline the social logic of the public places, people often choose to decorate their “significant" places with a mural: the koin, the seat of the association (AVD and Association de Quartier) (see picture “4”), the play grounds, the workplaces, and the market. In this way, they manage their "own" public space and mark a "collective territoriality" (see picture “12”: the fishermen at Hann have decorated their workplace, the beach).

12.

The production of devotional pictures is particularly important. These pictures decorate the interiors of the numerous dahira (Islamic communities) as well as the walls of the buildings of Dakar. Everywhere the portrait of the founder of the Islamic Mouride Brotherhood, Amadou Bamba, of his disciple Ibhra Fall, episodes of their lives and of the great Mosque of Touba (see picture) remind the faithful, who very often are illiterate, and those who walk by, of the power of the brotherhood.

Thus an "imagined space" corresponds to the “real” city. The popular toponymy, with "spoken" and fanciful denominations such as "Baghdad" and "Cité Millionnaire" (two zones of the popular district Grand Yoff), "Patte d’oie" (webbed foot of the goose), "Fass" (Wolof: knot), "angle ngoumba" (Wolof: corner of the blind), "Khar Yalla" (Wolof: waiting for God), "Los Angeles" contrasts with the "official" toponymy  of  “S.I.C.A.P. zones” and “HLM zones” identified from a number (HLM 1, HLM 2...) .
 
 

In conclusion, these observations may show that modernity and restless processes of urbanization have turned Dakar into a space of invention. The affective force that binds small groups based on associative ties produces a sense of collective identity based on a shared knowldege. Urban creativity expresses and embodies aspirations and similarities among "communities of sentiment" in the realm of group identity. Imagination is part of the social practice that locates the subjects and, in this way, has the makings for social reproduction.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Bibliography
Bachelard, Gaston: Poétique de l’espace. Parigi, P.U.F., 1983
Bugnicourt, Jacques e Diallo, Amadou: Set-Setal: des murs qui parlent... Dakar, Enda, 1991.
IAGU: Profil Environnemental de Dakar. Dakar, Institut Africain de Gestion Urbaine, 1993
Lévi-Strauss, Claude: “Esthétique et structuralisme”, in Le Monde 13/1/1968.
Ouédraogo, Dieudonné. Trois générations de citadins au Sahel. Montreal: L’Harmattan, 1999
Repetti, Massimo : http://www.3e14.com/smr/dakar/access.htm
Senegal Goverment. Recensement Général de la Population et Habitat 1988. Dakar: Bureau du Recensement, 1990.
 

-----------
Massimo Repetti is graduate in urban anthropology from École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris, France). His publications and research interests lie in the areas of contemporary urban african art and urban migration in developing countries. He is currently working on the question of urban insertion of the people coming from the rural areas (Senegal, Tunisia).

Translated by Deirdre Kantz<caneton@inwind.it>