ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to account for the “ruptured multiplicity” of subjective orientation in Cosmo City in relationship to the materiality of its presence. It argues that Heidegger’s concept of ontological enframing offers a way of thinking about the obduracy of infrastructural assemblages, despite changing political rationalities. The chapter shows how the object of the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) house reflects and in some way reproduces apartheid-era typologies despite new imaginaries of post-apartheid citizenship projected onto it. It discusses the emergence of the RDP house as the dominant form of social housing in South Africa, and examines its emergence to forms of apartheid-era urbanism. The chapter considers the ways in which beneficiaries have actually engaged with the RDP house in ways which contradict the ascribed subjectivities, specifically through what are called backyard economies. It suggests that backyard economies represent the manifestation of alternative imaginaries of being and becoming through the imperfect though ready-at-hand RDP house.
