African Cities: Space, Borders, and Identities

Barbara Fraticelli sheds light on a particular type of African narrative that has emerged since independence. More specifically, this chapter highlights the use of space as a crucial means of identity formation—and, surprisingly, of traversing cultural boundaries. Fraticelli takes the stance that, when it comes to the Iberian world, centuries of colonialism have had the ironic effect of blurring the continental constructs of “Africa” and “Europe” rather than reifying them, at the service of the maintenance of racial capital. Some African cities such as Luanda (Angola), and Maputo (Mozambique), have a recent convulsive and controversial history. After the independence from the metropolis, the descendants of Portuguese officials, businessmen or emigrants were driven to an uncertain destiny. Many of them felt like sudden foreigners in the country they were born and in which they no longer feel secure. Out of this insecurity a forced “return” or exodus began to a land, Portugal, that often presented a significant unknown and where these return travelers have sometimes been considered second-class citizens.