Hopeful new worlds: Narrating another Maputo at the interface between visceral experience of place and visceral empathy

Abstract

There is a certain lure to storied alternatives of the future, whether hopeful or otherwise, which rests on their potential to unsettle particular ways of dwelling and narrating the city. In this paper, we draw on visceral geographies and speculative fiction to stage a critical and imaginative exploration of Maputo's streetscapes. Through an empirical focus on the sites of Polana Caniço A, the Marginal, and Triunfo, we reflect on the changing relations between the body and the streetscape, as to the clues they offer about more hopeful futures. Based on the explored affordances of the streetscape, we propose a speculative fiction vignette that unveils new modes of ordering and cohabitation redolent with the workings of counter-cities and their potentialities. In the concluding part, we further the counter-cities line of thinking by reflecting on the transformative potential of speculative fiction as a critical mode of enquiry.