Anti-Teleology
Résumé
For some years now, scholars in a range of fields have been arguing that canonical approaches to urban space fall short when faced with cities such as Kinshasa. Despite claims to universal applicability, such approaches tend to be thoroughly Eurocentric. Rooted in the Modernist project, they favor teleological narratives of progress in which the Euro-American metropolis serves as the model and benchmark. At their core is a reliance on dichotomies - center versus periphery, formal vs informal, success vs failure - that cannot effectively account for diversity. Such either/or readings of urban space have a pernicious effect that extends far beyond the realm of philosophical difference. At the hands of the IMF, the World Bank and related institutions, or deployed by state-sponsored local and regional planning bodies, they shape policy and as a result impact millions of lives, more often than not in distinctly negative ways. If some scholars, as noted, have decried this state of affairs, theirs are not the voices that have proven most powerful in speaking out against such approaches. More effective, because more inventive and daring, have been " takes " suggested by artists in a range of different fields. A case in point is Congolese installation artist Méga Mingiedi, whose cartographic work centered on the cities of Kinshasa, Johannesburg and Dakar are the focus of this paper.
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