The story of a pump: life, death and afterlives within an urban planning of “divide and rule” in Nairobi, Kenya

Abstract

Through a story that connects the rhizomatic trajectories of abandonment in Mathare, Nairobi, I show how the continuities of an imperial planning become territorialized in a water pump in this “slum.” These events highlight the assembling of empire through ideas and practices for politics, ecology, economics and society that produce the city of Nairobi in the longue durée. Notwithstanding the persistence of a “divide and rule” spatial management, I show here how residents of poor spaces struggle for possibilities, however tragic. In dwelling in their stories, this paper argues that Nairobi's coloniality persists and principally in these ecologies of exclusion. The most visible imperial novelty, however, is that the police are used more frequently to enforce city divisions, becoming de facto urban managers and infrastructure. Against the reinstantiations of empire, I argue that the material and enunciatory struggles of slum residents potentiates fugitive possibilities for Nairobi as a whole.