Text, art and ambulation against detachment: alternatives to enclaving in Maputo

The dire inequalities that characterize African cities are often described in terms of structural or neoliberal violence, and anthropological analyses typically depict disparate patterns of exclusion, dehumanization and violence – including urban patterns of ‘enclaving’. Even though such analyses are crucial, we argue that studies of Africa should also identify urban practices of relationality, mutuality and collectivity; we approach these practices as key forms of negotiating intimacy and detachment. Here, we explore such urban practices in Maputo in the guise of texts adorning both crowded minibuses and privately owned cars, as well as specific works of street art. While often leading to laughter, comments or discussions among passengers as well as passers-by, ambulating texts and pieces of art also communicate aspirations for novel forms of sociality, attack people’s separation and lack of empathy, and, finally, speculate about new futures. By mapping art, texts and the ambulatory in Maputo, we make two arguments: first, we underline the usefulness of generating understandings of African urban spaces that avoid emphasizing the ever increasing dynamics of atomization or that project necropolitics as the most important element of African cities. Second, we show how temporality, including what we describe as ‘futureless-ness’, is actively and critically engaged by this type of textual, artistic and interpretative practice.