Paper short abstract:

Amid widespread interest in the everyday, few have considered spatial tactics of urban everynight life.  This paper investigates Johannesburg nightclubs as sites of quotidian political labour, through which young people contest and claim social space, as well as their place in it.

Paper long abstract:

Urban studies have given increasing attention to the everyday life of cities. Yet surprisingly little consideration has been given to their everynight life: the spatial tactics and creative insurgencies of urban residents after dark. Where authors have attended to the nocturnal city, those focused on 'pleasure' have often negated the subtle politics of nigh-time play, embedded in expressions of identity, attachment and resistance.

This paper investigates Johannesburg nightclubs as sites of quotidian political labour, through which young people contest social space and their place in it, thereby contributing to the city's affective and socio-political cartography. The tactical remodelling of the nocturnal city through nightclubbing traces lines of desire (material, emotional, sexual), affiliation, and expediency. These in turn map onto young people's expressions of their social and political identities, as well as their attempts at place-making in a 'post-apartheid' context.