Paper short abstract:

In this paper I discuss how the process of aesthetical reterritorrialization is shaping and transforming the social, political and moral landscape of Cape Town, including how people imagine, understand, relate to and dwell within urban spaces.

Paper long abstract:

In post-Apartheid Cape Town, the removal of physical barriers that had previously restricted free movement led its people to new and different forms of being and of experiencing the city across the different sensory domains. I argue that this sensory reappropriation of Cape Town's urban landscape presents a distinct type of reterritorialization, whereby people actively build new ways of living in, relating to and signifying the city through their sensory and aesthetic actions. In this paper I discuss how the process of aesthetical reterritorrialization is shaping and transforming the social, political and moral landscape of Cape Town, including how people imagine, understand, relate to and dwell within urban spaces. In my research in Cape Town between 2011 and 2012 I investigated the processes of reterritorialization of Cape Town, in which I adopted a type of observation of the city based on urban movement. For example, walking through the streets of Cape Town with Marleane, a young woman resident in the township, I realized how the practice of her moving through the city could not be disconnected from the flow of inner thoughts and images that crossed her mind. Through urban movement she reappropriated the urban spaces of Cape Town, projecting her memories, thoughts, imagination onto them. Drawing from Alex La Guma's novel, A Walk in the Night (1962), and comparing it to the type of movement of Cape Town's inhabitants, I explored the sensory perception of the urban territory and the processes of urban reterritorialization.