Fanon and Geographies of Political Violence in the Context of Democracy in Kenya

Sahle, Eunice N.

doi:10.1080/00064246.2012.11413610

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Frantz Fanon's (1963) analysis of the dividing lines that characterized French colonial spatial organization of Algiers is helpful here as we contend with the ways in which entire neighborhoods become racialized as threatening. In Kenya, British colonial spatial practices were integral to the production of Blackness as suspect and to the concomitant legitimation of state terror (Sahle 2012). Connecting contemporary urban planning to colonial‐era divide‐and‐rule tactics, Wangui Kimari (2019) astutely observes that the police in Nairobi comprise de facto forms of urban infrastructure and spatial management.…”

Section: The Urban Gray Zonementioning

confidence: 99%

Citizen‐Suspect: Navigating Surveillance and Policing in Urban Kenya

Al-Bulushi

2021

American Anthropologist

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article privileges the grounded geographies of the war on terror, focusing on those who grapple with its everyday policing powers. Informed by ethnographic research in the cities of Nairobi and Mombasa, I explore how Kenyan Muslim activists experience and make sense of the networked assemblages of police power that transform urban spaces into “gray zones” that fall within the ambiguous spectrum between war and peace. As US‐trained Kenyan police employ military tactics of tracking and targeting potential terror suspects in quotidian urban spaces, they rely on “pop‐up” interventions such as abductions, house raids, and makeshift checkpoints—flexible maneuvers designed to match the amorphousness of the so‐called enemy. I introduce the term citizen‐suspect to shed light on actually existing citizenship in the urban gray zone. Citizen‐suspects contend not simply with the fear and paranoia that come with subjection to surveillance and suspicion but with the knowledge that is needed to navigate the shape‐shifting geographies of transnational policing.

show abstract

Section: The Urban Gray Zonementioning

confidence: 99%