Sarah Nuttall is Associate Professor of Literature and Cultural Studies at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER), University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. She is the author of Entanglement: Literary and Cultural Reflections on Post-Apartheid (forthcoming) and an editor of several books, including Beautiful/Ugly: African and Diaspora Aesthetics, also published by Duke University Press.Achille Mbembe is Research Professor in History and Politics at WISER. He is the author of On the Postcolony and La naissance du maquis dans le Sud-Cameroun and a co-editor of Le politique par le bas en Afrique noire.

“An extraordinary exploration of what is so often left out of accounts about cities: what is beneath and what is at the edge. It goes where much of the urban scholarship leaves off or, rather, trails off. The authors’ project to write Johannesburg into today’s history will serve as a compass to enable researchers and writers to engage other cities that have been left out of history or given a narrow colonial presence.”-Saskia Sassen, author of Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages “Taken together, the essays in Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis offer radically new ways of thinking about this complex city, as well as many hints about emerging or re-emerging cities elsewhere. The essays challenge dominant models of urbanism and demonstrate with force and subtlety how African cities in general and Johannesburg in particular outpace urban theory. Each essay ‘de-scribes’ the city now in order to envision the city to come. In this volume, we hear-over the droning clichÉs that still circulate about the African city’s ruin and decadence-another note, another cadence.”-Ackbar Abbas, author of Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance

• Acknowledgments viiIntroduction: Afropolis / Achille Mbembe and Sarah Nuttall 11. Aesthetics of Superfluity / Achille Mbembe 372. People as Infrastructure / Abdoumaliq Simone 683. Stylizing the Self / Sarah Nuttall 914. Gandhi, Mandela, and the African Modern / Jonathan Hyslop 1195. Art Johannesburg and Its Objects / David Bunn 1376. The Suffering Body of the City / FrÉdÉric Le Marcis 1707. Literary City / Sarah Nuttall 195Voice Lines Instant City / John Matshikiza 221Soweto Now / Achille Mbembe, Nsizwa Dlamini, and Grace Khunou 239The Arrivants / Tom Odhiambo and Robert Muponde 248Johannesburg, Metropolis of Mozambique / Stefan Helgesson 259Sounds in the City / Xavier Livermon 271Nocturnal Johannesburg / Julia Hornberger 285Megamalls, Generic City / Fred De Vries 297Yeoville Confidential / Achal Prabhala 307From the Ruins / Mark Gevisser 317Reframing Township Space / Lindsay Bremner 337Afterword: The Risk of Johannesburg / Arjun Appadurai and Carol A. Breckenridge 349Bibliography 355Contributors 375Index