ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the naming of urban spaces contributes in the formation of colonial and postcolonial political orders, imposing prospective imaginations of urbanity, as well as selectively memorialising and forgetting the past. In particular, the chapter examines the naming and renaming of streets, reference points and neighbourhoods by the state apparatus in a large Mozambican city like the present capital Maputo. Through this study of urban naming, we discuss how successive political projects were emplaced in Maputo, during the modern Portuguese colonial presence – from the late nineteenth century onwards, from the monarchy to the republic – and after political independence in 1975. Knowing the history of the creation and revision of urban names contributes to an understanding of the genealogy of moral mappings in postcolonial contexts. The chapter focuses on the role of urban naming in the formation of postcolonial state planning, foregrounding the ways in which state naming practices in 1976 produced a revised official geography that evokes plural projects of the political. We will interrogate how this plurality is productive of urban subjectivities.
