„Se retrouver sans toit, sans terre et sans travail“

I am happy to announce that my article “Se retrouver sans toit, sans terre et sans travail.” Spuren erZeugen / Zeigen als nachspürende Praktiken der impactés von Wakhinane Colobane was published in the anthology “Spuren Spüren | Sensing Traces Wissenspraktiken in der Transformation | Knowledge Practices in Transformation.”

The article traces the urban changes along the tracks of the Train Express Régional (TER) in the Senegalese capital Dakar. The modernisation of colonial-era train infrastructure by the TER mobility system has triggered profound socio-spatial relocation and displacement processes within urban spaces that were also constructed during the colonial era (Bigon 2009). Based on the reading of the material traces (Krämer 2016) of the TER project in the dense urban fabric of Dakar, the affective dimensions of traces (Harst 2023) are invoked as a reconstruction of the experiences and memories of the forcefully displaced impactés du TER. Using the case study of a co-production of traces, this article pursues the thesis that traces are not simply present, but must first be produced through specific practices and processes in order to become legible and to contest the positivist narrative of the state. The oral testimonies of the displaced impactés of Wakhinane Colobane were therefore materialised as traces in a collective counter mapping and thus made visible with the help of the visual method of drawing. This approach is particularly suitable for analysing the displacement processes, as it captures the simultaneity of producing traces (action) and witnessing (subject, speech act) as well as showing (visualisation, indexical reference) the socio-spatial shifts within the urban fabric.

Citation Suggestion

Meienberg, Simon. 2025. „‚Se retrouver sans toit, sans terre et sans travail.‘ Spuren erZeugen/zeigen als nachspürende Praktiken der impactés von Wakhinane Colobane“. S. 115–141 in Spuren/Spüren | Sensing Traces. Wissenspraktiken in der Transformation | Knowledge Practices in Transformation, wbg Academic, edited by Joachim Harst, Simone Pfeifer, und Sandra Kurfürst. Köln: Herder.