TY - JOUR
T1 - How Things Will Go
T2 - Genre, Infrastructure, and Hope in Welcome to Lagos
AU - Oh, Rebecca
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 Johns Hopkins University Press. All rights reserved.
PY - 2023/7
Y1 - 2023/7
N2 - This article examines how two structuring forms, infrastructure and genre, facilitate and distribute affects of hopeful futurity in Chibundu Onuzo's 2017 novel Welcome to Lagos. I argue that genre acts as the infrastructure of infrastructure, an underlying connective logic that shapes how infrastructures are encountered and perceived. In turn, infrastructures materialize generic expectations about the world. Welcome to Lagos' comic form, which aestheticizes contingency and fortune, shapes the way characters relate to informal infrastructures like underbridges and abandoned buildings. Such discarded spaces reinforce a view of the city as a space rife with opportunity. In contrast to more pessimistic views of the postcolonial city, Welcome to Lagos' comedy and infrastructure foreground how access to resources and materials are unpredictably distributed, in turn making feelings of hopeful or open futurity more available to the urban poor. Ultimately, I argue that affects like hope index the lived force of genre and infrastructure as structuring forms, and that genre and infrastructure are useful for theorizing postcolonial affect.
AB - This article examines how two structuring forms, infrastructure and genre, facilitate and distribute affects of hopeful futurity in Chibundu Onuzo's 2017 novel Welcome to Lagos. I argue that genre acts as the infrastructure of infrastructure, an underlying connective logic that shapes how infrastructures are encountered and perceived. In turn, infrastructures materialize generic expectations about the world. Welcome to Lagos' comic form, which aestheticizes contingency and fortune, shapes the way characters relate to informal infrastructures like underbridges and abandoned buildings. Such discarded spaces reinforce a view of the city as a space rife with opportunity. In contrast to more pessimistic views of the postcolonial city, Welcome to Lagos' comedy and infrastructure foreground how access to resources and materials are unpredictably distributed, in turn making feelings of hopeful or open futurity more available to the urban poor. Ultimately, I argue that affects like hope index the lived force of genre and infrastructure as structuring forms, and that genre and infrastructure are useful for theorizing postcolonial affect.
KW - comedy
KW - genre
KW - hope
KW - infrastructure
KW - urbanism
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85171658337&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85171658337&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1353/ari.2023.a905708
DO - 10.1353/ari.2023.a905708
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85171658337
SN - 0004-1327
VL - 54
SP - 11
EP - 36
JO - Ariel
JF - Ariel
IS - 3-4
ER -