Anatomy of exclusion in an African city : on ambivalence

Abstract

This paper draws on psychoanalytic concepts of incipient boundary formation to theorize the ambivalent nature of exclusionary socio-political practices in urban sub Saharan Africa, applying this to an analysis of the Mũngĩkĩ organization in Kenya. Using the notion of a 'return to nature', it concludes that the very ambivalence of exclusionary practices produces an inversion of power relations, as the excluded instrumentalise the very identity for which they have been excluded.