Anthropology of Cities Theory Paper

Flood Gates and Fractures: Kinshasa as a Produced Space

In this paper I will examine Filip De Boeck’s rendering of Kinshasa in “Kinshasa: Tales of the ‘Invisible City’ and the Second World” within the theoretical framework of Henri Lefebvre’s “The Production of Space.” It is necessary, before delving into De Boeck’s text, to gain a basic understanding of how Lefebvre is using the terms “production” and “space.” Lefebvre defines production broadly according to the philosophies of Marx and Engles stating that “production…embraces a multiplicity of works and a great diversity of forms, even forms that do not bear the stamp of the producer or of the production process” (68-9, Lefebvre). In his application of the concept of production to space, and socialized space in particular, Lefebvre explains that “space is not a thing among other things, nor a product among other products: rather, it subsumes things produced, and encompasses their interrelationships in their coexistence and simultaneity” (73, Lefebvre). Armed with these definitions, I propose that De Boeck’s representation of Kinshasa exposes dialectics as a driving force in the production of Kinshasa as a space according to Lefebvre’s definition of the production of space.


De Boeck picks up on Lefebvre’s implication that there is an infinite superimposition and interpenetration of social spaces within any given space. Lefebvre, towards the end of his chapter on social space, poses the question “how many maps, in the descriptive or geographical sense, might be needed to deal exhaustively with a given space, to code and decode all its meanings and contents?” and then goes on to answer it himself: “it is doubtful whether a finite number can ever be given in answer to this sort of question. What we are most likely confronted with here is a sort of instant infinity” (85, Lefebvre). Lefebvre, without knowledge or intention, lays the foundation, with his answer to this question, for De Boeck’s opening image of Kinshasa as a mirror hall—De Boeck’s own form of an “instant infinity.” De Boeck, in his opening description of Kinshasa, lays out his intention to map a series of component elements (or mirrors) through which one might interpret the city of Kinshasa: the mirror of colonialism, the mirror of the village, the mirror of gossip and urban myth, and the mirror of the dead or “second world.” De Boeck does not attempt to elaborate on each and every mirror through which the city of Kinshasa is reflected, revealed and interpreted but, through his examination of these four expansive mirrors he begins to access the sense of infinity one gets when standing in the middle of a hall of mirrors surrounded by reflections and reflections of reflections.


Each of the mirrors De Boeck examines reveals yet another dialectic that has “produced” the space of Kinshasa. Lefebvre allows ample room and validation for the role of dialectics in production when he claims “social spaces interpenetrate one another and/or superimpose themselves upon one another. They are not things, which have mutually limiting boundaries and which collide because of their contours or as a result of inertia” (86-87, Lefebvre). In this excerpt, Lefebvre implies that unlike objects, dialectic spaces do not collide but rather interpenetrate …or, perhaps, in the words of De Boeck, reflect each other and through that reflection generate new meaning and a joint identity. One such reflection in De Boeck’s text comes from “the European mirror of colonialism which…created the primitivist idea of the Congo and its counter-image, the urban landscape” (246, De Boeck). De Boeck further abstracts and fully articulates the vital role of dialectics in the development of Kinshasa when he claims

Congo’s capital constantly smashes its own mirrors. At the same time, it never stops to piece itself back together. In ways that often leave the observer perplexed, the city constantly activates and undergoes the effervescent push and pull of destruction and regeneration. The incessant and chaotic crossing of the borders between these two forces somehow seems to generate the energetic source from which Kinshasa taps the power to embody, animate, and sustain its own…ongoing attempts at societal creation. (245, De Boeck)

In this quote, De Boeck begins to acknowledge the role of destruction as a form of creation in the interaction of dialectics. It is through his choice of imagery—“smashes its own mirrors”—that we begin to see a divergence between Lefebvre’s theoretical framework and De Boeck’s experience of Kinshasa.


There are many substantial ways in which Lefebvre and De Boeck’s texts mutually reinforce each other, some of which I have touched on above. However, their use of imagery betrays them—they conceive of the process of “production” differently. Lefebvre uses the analogy of hydrodynamics—one that is complex but coherent and continuous—while De Boeck uses mirroring—one that is complex, disorienting and fragmented. Lefebvre uses hydrodynamics to explain the ways in which social spaces interact, claiming that the principle of the superimposition of small movements teaches us the importance of the roles played by scale, dimension and rhythm. Great movements, vast rhythms, immense waves—these all collide and ‘interfere; with one another; lesser movements on the other hand, interpenetrate” (87, Lefebvre). De Boeck, on the other hand, uses the images of fracture, shattering, broken and deformed mirrors, a kaleidoscope, mutation, instability, rupture. Lefebvre leaves us with a sense of security using terms such as nexus, convergence, machine to describe a house (as a micro-city), the forces of which “the occupants of the house perceive, receive and manipulate” (92-93, Lefebvre). De Boeck, on the other hand, leaves us with a sense of lost agency: “the crisis in the Congo essentially evolves around the containment of, the struggle to reestablish control over, an increasingly overflowing imaginary …the imaginary ceaselessly creates its own level of autonomy, with all its excesses, its witchcraft, its diabolization of social life” (285, De Boeck). This is our last image as we conclude De Boeck’s analysis of Kinshasa: an image of Dr. Frankenstein’s monster—Kinshasa’s imaginary as a thing that becomes terrifying or destructive to its maker, the city itself.


Both Lefebvre and De Boeck use dialectics as a lens through which to understand the process by which spaces are produced. While Kinshasa does, in many ways, fit Lefebvre’s definition of a “produced space,” De Boeck’s use of language leads us to feel a sense of lost agency and improvisational aimlessness that does not resonate with Lefebvre’s implication of coherence and continuity despite complexity.