‘We deserve new things’: (anti-)bricolage in Lomé’s makerspaces

Abstract

AbstractThis article traces bricolage in the city of Lomé, Togo, as it is given meaning, practised and resisted by the ‘makers’ involved in the city’s makerspaces. While the Lévi-Straussian definition of bricolage as ‘making do’ given limited resources is heralded as an innovative practice in the Euro-American Maker Movement, Lomé’s makers appear to distance themselves from the concept due to its perceived stigmatization in both Lomé and Francophone Africa as a devalued survival practice through improvisation. Through their identification as ‘makers but not bricoleurs’, and their expression ‘we deserve new things’, I unpack the ambiguous relationship Lomé’s makers have with bricolage, and how their disavowal of the concept reveals more about the global infrastructural inequalities that surround it. By foregrounding the critical self-awareness of Lomé’s makers, I explore how ethnography allows for the de-centring and decolonization of foundational concepts and ideologies, as the makers challenge and reclaim bricolage to arrive at a future where it is no longer a necessity but a choice.