Paper short abstract:

This paper is a multivocal exploration of the range of legal, political, and esoteric and secret forms of knowledge - and apparent non-knowledge - deployed by a variety of actors, to contest, justify, or otherwise explain the 'evictability' of (women) traders at a Malian market in urban Senegal.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is a multivocal analysis (Campregher 2010) of the eviction of (women) traders at a market in downtown Dakar, Senegal. The Malian market was established around the terminus for transnational trains running between the capitals of Senegal and Mali and was run primarily by women of Malian and Mande background. The paper explores the different forms of knowledge put forward by various actors, both to save the market and to justify or explain the 'evictability' of the women traders. This includes legal, political, and esoteric and secret knowledge, as well as apparent non-knowledge.

Malian elites and male traders in particular drew on various forms of knowledge to discursively draw the boundaries of governance within the city and establish who was inside or outside of these boundaries and hence, determine who could be evicted (Pezzano 2016). Ironically, though, high-level correspondences with authorities, identity political claims, or knowledge of the laws governing evictions and contracts of lease appeared less powerful than esoteric and secret knowledge in keeping eviction at bay.

Strikingly, however, amidst this cacophony of voices the women who had built and run the market remained largely silent during the eviction process. The final part of the paper interrogates 'the silence of women' (Brett-Smith 2014) in light of cultural and gendered notions of secrecy, knowledge and power among the Mande; and in the wider context of political upheaval and regime change in Dakar at a time when actors, who were normally silenced, suddenly spoke out of turn (Fredericks 2014).