ABSTRACT
So that other city, that peripheral city that is the real city, has developed according to its own notion of what capital might mean, or what forms of accumulation might mean. In order to exist socially in a city like Kinshasa, expenditure, circulation and conspicuous consumption are far more important than accumulation or maximalization of profit. Accumulation requires a directionality, a teleology, a specific temporality which is not the temporality of the city today. The city, on the contrary, is a space of the sudden, the unforeseen, the unexpected and fleeting moment. In order to survive it, one has to know how to capture that moment. It is this practice of capture and seizure that determines life and survival in the city, which itself is often compared to the space of the forest. As such the city does not function according to a standard capitalist logic as we know it. That also means that the urbanscape is not so much shaped by the dynamics of modernity but rather that it is constantly infused with all kinds of notions and moralities that often have longstanding, rural roots. (De Boeck 2010:36–7)
