Claiming the City through the Cape Verdean Festivities of Kola San Jon in Lisbon: A Lefebvrian Case Study

ABSTRACT

As cities experience the effects of increasing inequalities, so social movements, scholars and even mainstream institutions are once again placing Lefebvre's notion of the “right to the city” on the agenda. This new popularity often strips the concept of its political meaning, namely by approaching Lefebvre's notion as juridical and as an aspect of a more general way of proceeding by planning, that has effects in terms of what is recognised as part of the political sphere, and of claiming the city. We aim to contribute to the debate through the discussion of a case study interested in a yearly festive event in central Lisbon. Drawing on Henri Lefebvre's lexicon for an interpretation of popular involvement with public urban life, the article starts with an account of Lisbon's Fordist socio-spatial segregation, and the neoliberal deepening of gentrification and profit-making urban regeneration. It then focuses on the Cape Verdean performative event Kola San Jon in the context of Lisbon's Festas da Cidade, and the active involvement of inhabitants of Cova da Moura, a marginalised neighbourhood which has, over the years, drawn on cultural and civic activities for reclaiming a voice in the public space.

KEYWORDS:

• Right to the city
• urban change
• Lefebvre
• Lisbon
• Kola San Jon

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Ethnographic research was conducted by J. Carolino in Bairro da Cova da Moura (Municipality of Amadora, Greater Lisbon Area) between 2011 and 2016. In 2012, she followed the group during meetings that, between January and June each year, prepare the June festivities. She participated in most events in which the group Kola San Jon was involved and carried out individual interviews with the people that take part in the group’s activities regularly. In 2012, 2013 and 2015, she took part in the festivities both in central Lisbon and at Cova da Moura, keeping on with individual interviews and taking part in some of the group’s activities. In 2012 and 2013, with the ethnomusicologist Ana Flávia Miguel, Carolino was responsible for the scientific report that supported Kola San Jon's application to the National Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage, submitted by Associação Cultural Moinho da Juventude. She thanks her friends in Cova da Moura and other residents who patiently taught her about their lifeworld. This work is financed by national funds through Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P.), under the Strategic Project with the reference UIDB/04008/2020.

2 See https://www.ine.pt/ngt_server/attachfileu.jsp?look_parentBoui = 530368318&att_display = n&att_download = y.

3 In the 1960s, Lefebvre became professor of urban sociology at the University of Nanterre (Paris), by then a suburb of Paris where many migrants lived precariously. The construction of the university campus redeveloped the area without giving a concrete answer to the precarious housing of migrants. Starting from this reality, Lefebvre invited his students to analyse the city of Paris from the point of view of these inhabitants, according to a sociological method: the urban sociologist, in observing the city, have to start from those subjects and those places who experience spatial discrimination and injustices in their everyday life (Biagi 2020, 76–81).

4 That reflection is part of the philosophy project that had been defined with the Situationists in the formula Changer la vie! On the spatial plan, it re-proposes the relation between the work of art and the spectator as subject who enjoys its beauty: “Change life! Change society! These precepts mean nothing without the production of an appropriate space” (Lefebvre [1974] 1991, 59). The spectator is protagonist in the definition of the signifiers of the oeuvre itself:

Once upon a time, works of art were significant constructs presented to the senses … “viewers” and “listeners” . . . were not entirely passive, contributed the signified to the signifier . . . the message was “freely” re-assembled, yet its interpretation was based on a familiar code depending on a given referential; monuments, cathedrals, Greek temples and eighteenth-century palaces—all stylized works, in fact—were perceived in this way. (Lefebvre [1968] 1971, 119).

5 Most English translations of Lefebvre's “fête” use the word “festival.” This also happens in secondary bibliography (e.g., Grindon 2013), but we choose to use the word “festivity” to indicate the concept of “celebration,” without implying a beginning and an end, typical of an event. We wish to indicate a “moment” of everyday life that subverts linear capitalist time, that is, the conception and practice of life typical of the dominant power. In the “festivity” there is an emancipatory and creative re-appropriation of time and space by the oppressed, who—at the same time—“celebrate” this type of liberation. This choice seems to us to work better with the original concept theorized by Lefebvre.

6 In the Paris Commune, space becomes the ultimate goal par excellence. In Lefebvre's own words:

The Paris Commune can be interpreted in light of the contradictions of space and not solely from the contradictions of historical time. . . . It was a popular response to Haussmann strategy. The workers who had been banished to the peripheral neighbourhoods and, re-appropriated the space from which Bonapartism and the political power strategy had excluded them. They tried to take back the possession in an atmosphere of feast (warrior but radiant). (Lefebvre [1972] 2000, 168).

7 This part is the extract of the declaration (personal communication undertaken and translated by J. Carolino during fieldwork, June 14, 2002) undersigned by Cova da Moura's residents and organisations, delivered to Amadora's City Council in 2002 following protests against the proposed demolition of circa two thirds of the bairro.

8 See “Kola San Jon” in http://www.matrizpci.dgpc.pt/matrizpci.web.

9 For further development, consider the English translation (Lefebvre [1974] 1991) by Donald Nicholson-Smith, who makes use of the terms here referred: “spatial practice” [pratique spatiale], “representations of space” [représentation de l'espace] and “representational spaces” [espaces de représentation]. Other scholars—see Space, Difference, Everyday Life edited by S. Kipfer, K. Goonewardena, C. Schmid and R. Milgrom—prefer to translate with “spatial practice,” “representations of space” and “spaces of representation” (Schmid 2008). We chose this second version, which I consider most commonly used.

10 The concept of “representations of space” can be defined as the complex weight of knowledge and power that includes the image and the dominant project of the capitalist production of space (Lefebvre [1974] 1991, 33). Lefebvre mentions the architecture and urban planning domains as ruling paradigms that operate as devisers of a specific production of space of their own to society. The representations of space therefore pertains to the ideology (Lefebvre [1974] 1991, 44) conveyed by the knowledges and places of power that rule the social. Every era, every way of production defines its own modality of ideating space and planning it.

11 The concept of “spaces of representation,” that could be developed in everyday life—of spaces designed in sharing and in the democratic self-management of inhabitants and users. If the “spatial practice” of “representations of space” is the interpretative grid of the urban and spatial project of the instances of power, the “spaces of representation” is its most radical antithesis and resistance point.

Additional information

Funding

This work is financed by national funds through the Foundation for Science and Technology (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I. P.), under the strategic project UIDB/04008/2020.

Notes on contributors

Júlia Carolino

Júlia Carolino is a social anthropologist (PhD in 2006, Brunel University) at the Research Centre for Architecture, Urbanism and Design, Lisbon School of Architecture, University of Lisbon. Her main research topics are landscape, power and placemaking in human-constructed environments. She has undertaken ethnographic research in Serra Algarvia, Alentejo, and Lisbon Metropolitan Area. Since 2013–2014, when she coordinated with the architect Joana Pestana Lages (University of Lisbon) the project “Exploring the Contributions of Relational Space for Promoting the Right to the City,” funded by the FCT (EXPL/ATP-EUR/1772/2012), she has taken part in multidisciplinary research on placemaking and its materialities.

Francesco Biagi

Francesco Biagi is a researcher in urban sociology at the GESTUAL—Group of Socio-Territorial, Urban and Local Action Studies—integrated in the CIAUD (the Research Centre in Architecture, Urbanism and Design) of the FAUL (Lisbon School of Architecture, University of Lisbon, Lisboa, Portugal). He also writes and devotes himself to urban studies and political theory. He is rediscovering Henri Lefebvre’s thought to understand the current neoliberal urban questions. With this aim, he has published the monographs: Henri Lefebvre. Una teoria critica dello spazio (Jaca Book, Milano 2019), and Henri Lefebvre's Critical Theory of Space (Palgrave Macmillan, London 2020).