Discursive Infrastructure: Enabling Epistemological Movements in Post-Colonial African Cities

Infrastructure is central to urban inequality (Pieterse et al., 2018). Amin (2014) has argued that "we are seeing the rise of a new genre of thinking that narrates the social life of a city through its material infrastructure". Yet while infrastructure is now increasingly at the centre of research on cities in Development Studies, there has been surprisingly little focus on the connections between infrastructure and discourse. In my previous research I demonstrated that urban policy creates unjust spatial distributions of infrastructure. This argument emphasised the agency of policy discourse in shaping urban realities. Through my research I developed the notion of "discursive infrastructure" to describe the relationship between discourse and the material conditions of cities (Le Thierry d'Ennequin, 2020). The purpose of this proposed research project is to theorise this novel concept as a post-colonial approach to African urbanism. My exploration of "discursive infrastructure" will unlock new entry points through which urban policy discourse can be understood and challenged. As a case study, this research project will focus on policy discourse of basic infrastructure systems that continue to materialise the spatial inequalities of African cities today (Graham & Marvin, 2001: 42; Pieterse et al., 2018: 160; Myers, 2003; Becker, 2020).