Thomas FouquetSocial Anthropology (Doctoral Candidate)Centre d'Études Africaines, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales,Paristhomas.fouquet@free.frTel. : (0033) 06 21 60 03 24

Cosmopolitan Skills and the Dakar by Night. Engaging the Metropolis from its “Elsewheres”

Work in progress

One must arrive at night. The plane flies over the Cap-Vert peninsula1 a first time and

begins a slow turn, flirting with the dark waters of the Ocean. Dakar then appears,

emerging from darkness. The city shows its “true” colors: neither the Panafrican green-

yellow-red, nor the Islamic green, but an electric and fluorescent candy pink glowing from

the Casino du Cap-Vert – one of Dakar’s most popular nightclubs. Unavoidable source of

light and color in the dark, it captures the eye of the impatient passenger.

This is a rather provocative way to set the Dakar scene while some

commentators are currently debating about the rise of a

theologico-moralistic conservatism in Senegal. As many agree to

say, Dakar by night is thereby quite widely heralded as emblematic of

the yombe-life2 – the site of the falsification of an “authentically

African/Senegalese Self”. Within urban Senegalese popular culture,

1 The Peninsule du cap-vert mark the boundary of the region of Dakar.2 Dakar by night: very common expression in Senegal, especially in the newspaper,

that designates the bars and nighclubs of Dakar. Yomb-life: composed of thewolof yomb (light, easy, cheap) and of the english life, this expression (verycommon in the youth urban language) evocates the idea of researching thefacility, in a pejorative sense of moral deperdition and loss of thetrue/authentical cultural values.

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the yombe-life is what is not “really senegalese”, what drives one

appart from the “true values” and deludes the “malades de la boussole”

(“All magnetized West”, as the french writer Erik Orsenna puts it)

following the model of an “Evil imported from the West/Elsewhere”

[“mal venu d'ailleurs”].

Here is thus a paradox in these pink neon lights: an invitation to

“lust” for newcomers? They appear to be much more like a wink

from a facetious and multiple metropolis that can't easily get

caught up in dogmas. This is indeed no wonder for those who, like

myself, take a particular interest in alternative social

trajectories that shape the city as much as they are shaped by it.

Therefore Dakar (and more generally Senegal) is not only an

example of order and stability that contrasts with most of the

continent’s other major cities known/said to be instable,

dangerous and disorderly. Neither is it only the cradle of the

“contrat social sénégalais”3 (the Senegalese social contract) nor only the

good student of international “good governance” – after having

been the window of the French “civilizing mission” in West Africa.

Nor is Dakar moreover a Western aberration, or “almost White” on

the “Black continent” as many say or suppose.

How many times have I heard (even from academics, French at

least), that “Dakar is not really Africa!”, referring in such a way less to

the Western expatriate community than to the so-called

“Westernization” of the morals and minds of urban Senegalese

themselves. Condescension of the former metropolis to the former

colony? “Paris suburb of Dakar!” would retort most of my friends in

3 According to Donal Cruise O'Brien (1992), this historical contract is basedon an arrangement between Islamic brotherhoods and political elites. It thusdefines a situation of “two head State” which, according to Cruise O'Brien,is quite a vector of social and political stability.

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Dakar...

Nevertheless, thinking beyond both the valuations - as futile as

biased - of Dakar's “Africanness”, and jokes made in return that

are certainly not as (postcolonialy) innocent as they appear, one is

struck by the following: this West-African metropolis, taken in

its entire social, cultural and historical thickness, in its

mobile, plural and fertile dimensions, reverberates a multi-

faceted Senegalese society, full of nuances and (apparent)

contradictions. Dakar is connected to multiple elsewheres in which

its inhabitants – like clever craftsmen of present time - draw and

poach, reinventing their city all day and all night long. The

result is a hybrid entity at the intersection of the local and the

global, of conformity and transgression, of “formal” and

“informal”, and, ultimately, of order and disorder. This paper

explores the deep heteroglossia of what it means to be a urban citizen;

it is about how some individuals manage to invent their own

“order” in the margins of an apparent urban disorder, resorting to

their sense of creativity and to the specific skills they gain,

step by step.

I will approach this question by using the entry-point of the

ethnographic study I have conducted since 2002 with young Dakar

women. “Night girls”, “Belles de nuit” or more pejoratively “real caga”4

according to dominant social discourses (“Night-bird adventuress”

[aventurières noctambules] as I prefer to call them), these young

women engage with Dakar by night through various predation

strategies, using their bodies and their seductive power as their

main weapons. However, I consider these social forms less as means4 Originally, caga means “ divorced woman”. In today's urban language, it

designates (quite pejoratively) the prostitute: the “ whore ” would be itsbest translation.

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to cope with “basic needs” (“survival sex”) than from the

perspective of the desires, aspirations and specific lifestyles

they contain and express at the same time: especially, longings

for dépaysement, telling yourself and others another story; one where

there is a participation to “good life” and “World Society”. This

“imaginary exile” is underpinned by the “desires of Elsewhere”

that are so widely shared amongst the Senegalese youths (Fouquet

2008); Dakar by night is one of its most favored scene of expression.

Throughout these eminently urban trajectories, how are needs and

desires embedded in the production of original “arts of

existence”?, and which specific relationships to the urban

environment - which subjective and intimate visions of the city -

emerge?

Here are, briefly outlined, the main issues I will discuss in this

paper, by focusing on the arts of “being-in-town” developed by the

young Dakar women I have encountered: that is to say, the

cunnings, tricks and wit involved in an alternative and subaltern

urban citizenship.

I shall start with (1) introductory remarks on the paradigm of the

“urban adventure” and, in particular, the difficulty to apply it

to the feminine. I will then (2) examine the urban inscriptions

and expressions of the “imaginary exile” as it is experienced and

invented by the young Dakaroises encountered. I shall finally

conclude (3) insisting on a form of knowledge which is at the very

heart of this object: the “cosmopolitan skills”, and the critical

and political dimensions introduced by them.

1. The urban and nightly adventure in the feminine

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Who are really these young Dakar “dribbleuses”5: “prostitutes”, even if

“in disguise” or who “don't give away their real name”6? “Free” or

“modern” girls who “act as a Toubab” [White, Westerner]? A bit of

everything? It is difficult anyhow to enclose them within rigid

categories - prostitution, transactional sex or even mbaraan7 – in

view of the mobility, fluidity, and ambiguity that characterize

their practices and trajectories. They organize a permanent

blurriness, in order not to be assigned to a fixed status that

would otherwise acquire the force of an essentialized and

stigmatized “identity” (in particular that of the “prostitute”).

Morevover, thanks to these ambiguous positions, they keep the

realms of possibility as open as possible, shifting constantly

among different roles. Broadly, their stake is to gain as much as

possible financially/materially but also symbolically (we will see

that the virtuosity in the art of predation is extremely valued),

whilst giving in as little as possible physically/sexually.

The “clandestinity”, far from being merely legal, then takes the

forms of a strategy: from the “filles en cartes” to the “brouillage des

cartes”8. What is of great interest here is the fact that these5 Dribbleuse: the cheater, the girl who cheats with men.6 As it is often said of the mbaraaneuses (the girls who take part in mbaraan:

see footnote below).7 In urban contemporary Senegal, mbaraan disguises a kind of commercial sex

(female multipartnership) that is not socially assimilated to prostitution.These strategies resort to manipulation and “faux-semblant”, and benefit fromthe strong blackout that surrounds the discussions about sexuality inSenegal: the question of what actually happened in these relationships isusually difficult to ask, and is thus surrounded by a halo of uncertainty andambivalence. The real problem is not whether the mbaraan implies a sexualreciprocity (as well as prostitution), but to gauge the ability of the girlsto conceal it from the eyes of most people (or at least to maintain asufficient doubt).

8 I refer here to the fact that prostitution has a legal status in Senegal,which implies among other things the possession of a “prostitute card” (a

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strategies of social mobility have very concrete spatial

translations in the urban and “night owl” geography of bars and

nightclubs. The most “competent” girls are those who manage to

frequent the less stigmatizing or even the trendiest clubs whilst

implementing their predation strategies.

Furthermore, if they often contend that they are looking for men

who may “gérer” (manage) them or resolve their financial problems,

what these young women build with their nights is far from being

limited to material gains. Hedonistic and recreationnal quests of

the “good life”, the desire to confer a greater intensity to

everyday life, the search for dépaysement allowing to move along

some moral boundaries linked to gender and an “African” or “too

Senegalese” stigma, are also pivotal issues. The daily presence in

bars and nightclubs - the ways they perform themselves and their

identity, the knowledge and skills they acquire – is a means to

narrate oneself as a modern individual. Finally, these young women

approach Dakar by night as a terrain de contestation/contestation field “in which

[they] seek to annex the global world into their own practices of

the modern” (Appadurai 1996): this is what I synthesize as the

“nightbird aventurers”.

The Adventurer: in-between here and Elswhere, the city as a backdrop

From the perspective of french African studies, the Adventurer is

the one who tries to invent his own path to success - or at least

its material and symbolic emblems - resorting to cunning,

cleverness and courage. He is also the one who tries to extricate

himself from the status of “eternal social cadet” to which hehealth book, in fact).

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feels confined both in his home society and at a global level,

even resorting to means often condemned from a legal-moral point

of view: clandestine migration, various predatory practices

(banditry, scam) - opportunism of all kinds. While the adventurer

is thus often associated with migration, he is far from being

reduced to it. The relationship with the “Elsewhere” or the

International (or the “Global”) can also occur through a more

imaginary than geographical path. The young postcolonial

adventurer is also the one who makes his own furrow in the big

city, in search of different opportunities but also of social

distinction. So the adventure, viewed at the “reduced” level of a

city like Dakar, Lagos, Johannesburg or Abidjan, may also be

considered in ways of “being there ... and there ... and there!”,

following the model of the multi-sited ethnography proposed

notably by Ulf Hannerz (2003). The problem is then to understand

the different “worlds” (real or imaginary) in which the actors

circulate; the ways they move into “ville-flux” [cities-in-motion]

(Malaquais 2006), and how they occupy “Elsewheres” which,

sometimes, acquire value and function as strategic “lieux propres” (de

Certeau 1990) as is the case of Dakar by night.

It must be however acknowledged that in most African urban

societies, the adventure in the feminine has been “naturally” socially

disqualified since, historically, it has been mainly deployed

through forms (venal sex and seduction) and in sites (typically,

dance-bars and nightclubs) that are targets of moral discourses

and condemnations. The “a priori stigmas” that hang over these sites

and practices mask the subjectivities and aspirations that are

effectively expressed through them.

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By contrast, the trajectories of some male “adventurers” can be

understood through the cunning and courage they deploy in the face

of obstacles of various kinds – whatever the relations they bear

with laws and prevailing moral values. Ivory Coast' ghettomen,

Cameroon' feymen, Nigerian' 911, South African' tsotsi, Congolese'

shege and sapeurs are some of the best known examples. The moral

values, the “poses” and styles (language, clothing, dances and

music, etc..) emerging in the wake of these figures of urban

adventurers - the nouchy in Ivory Coast, South African tsotsitaal,

etc.. - are the fundamental pivots of urban cultures to which many

young people now identify with, throughout the Continent.

Regarding Senegal, Mamadou Diouf (2002) notes that these cultural

expressions “shape a new memory eager to break with the

constructions and metaphors produced” by the preceding

generations. They are thus positioned out of step from the

hierarchies of prestige and pathways promoted by the post-

independence' “big men”. Rather than ruptures, these social and

cultural expressions are at the heart of a “new urban historicity”

that reflects both disorganization and “reorganization and

reconstruction of a plurality of historical legacies.” (Ibid.).

As opposed to these male examples, girls who equally manifest

their “indocility” by voluntarily and openly deviating from

certain roles and social spacess, or even by being at the margins

of legality, are always subject to a “double penalty”: both

delinquents and “moral delinquents”. They might be very widely

stigmatized as “depraved women” who spoil their name and

reputation. They thus will not be in a position to become referent

social models, as the moral values of “honor” and “reputation”

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vary greatly according to the gendered perspective and social

valuations. Clandestine practices, hidden agenda and other “hidden

transcripts” surely allow material gains and reflect an undeniable

agency. Nevertheless, they remain tools or repertoires of action,

and not social or moral “values” that can be exposed at the

forefront of the social scene. This does not mean that women are

unable to glean some forms of power and prestige, or even to

incarnate success within a peer group. Rather, they are not able

to access the “popular legitimacy” - even ambivalent, fragmented

and fundamentally controversial - to which some boys are entitled.

Since a while ago, whether within the “colonial situation” or

within the current (named hereafter “postcolonial situation”),

feminine indocility has been expressed and denounced in terms of

“light morals” and sexual accessibility, in other words following

the moral categories of the “bad morals” and the “bad sexuality” –

and even the “bad woman”. Adventure in the feminine is, synthetically,

less visible or detectable immediately as it is when it is in the

masculine: identification strategies to certain images of good life

are more commonly confronted to the judgments of girls of bas-life

(yomb-life) [French: “bonne vie” Vs. “filles de mauvaise vie”

(prostitutes)]. In other words, using here a paradigm (adventure)

largely constructed at the contact of masculine realities neither

implies an advocacy anthropology in favor of women, nor even less

denies the implication of gender, but on the contrary takes into

account the effects of that parameter. It means examining, within a

space and a field of given practices, the possibilities and

impossibilities that stem from gender – we could use the term “its

structuring effects”, as long as it does not refer to structuralism in

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the strong sense.

2. Adventurous nightlife: “exile imaginary” and urban variations

From the old bars of the Plateau (historical centre of Dakar) to

the ultra-hype nightclubs of the Almadies (extreme West of the Cap-

Vert peninsula), Dakar by night reveals itself primarily through

lighting sets. Yellowish glints of lights that show blurred halos

and give the street a sepia color, as if acquiring a patina in the

course of time; aggressiveness of neon and halogen lamps that draw

straights rays and cut the night with a laser. Those are as many

indicators that map the night bird’s trip, frame his/her vision,

shape his/her senses, stimulate his/her imagination.

The Nirvana, croisement Almadies. It is a recent and trendy night-

club every night full of people. Once night comes, the building’s

façade takes on a new layer, like a multicolored hologram: subtle

arrangement of lights, once again, that create a nearly unreal

shelter. An invitation to travel to “another place”: “heterotopia”

of the party, of leisure and of glamour.

The dancers answer to the invitation, honor it. Forms, roundness,

fleshy curves that reflect the light with grace, that bounce it

off and sublime it. Furtive glint from an earring, followed by a

striking bolt of lip gloss; glistening dresses that light up an

instant; ankle chain that lights up in turn, and, following the

natural shape, indicates the curve of a leg. And this is just the

start. The bodies irradiate, go from darkness to light, from

anonymity to reputation/fame. They show and confirm their power to

seduce. They are “ utopian bodies ” that “ show and magnify all

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possible places ”, whether real or imaginary (Foucault 2009).

The “girls of the night” are on this trip. The night owl adventure

as these young women invent and live it is elaborated on a gap, a

social and cultural distance that depends on dépaysement, on borders

and contrasts: here/elsewhere; day/night; passivity/activity; kaw-

kaw [red neck, bushman]/trendy, etc. An imaginary exile that

invents and builds itself daily by feeding on places, sounds,

dances, language expressions, clothes and brands, poses and

attitudes...

When the night comes, they mix with the crowd, melt in with more or

less success and savoir-faire. Maybe they are a bit more attentive but

only slightly. Exiled of the night, like the others, they make

their bodies communicate and believe the promise of a new “night

bid” adventure starting. The dream is at the end of the night…every

night : a game of truth and fakeness that repeats itself, again and

again. Everything is true, as long as you believe in it with the strength

and the faith of a drifter convinced to have seen an island. Hope

and its opposite are so similar that the absence of one immediately

benefits the other – the full, the fulfilled.

“ When I go out at night, I have the feeling that I am someone

else. There is no one to judge you, you do as you please, you

see? You party, you dance, well-dressed, everyone is well-

dressed, I mean, we make life, you do your things! I don’t

know but I have the feeling that at night, things can happen

to you… good things, you will meet someone that will change

your life. ” (Bintou, 23).

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The night adventure is paved of “preys” as well. It is based on an

“art of eating” others – the male, the “financial sponsers” – in

order to affirm oneself as consumer in a social world where wants

and frustrations create an extremely brutal competitive system

between individuals. Facing this “economy of unfulfilled desires”

[économie des désirs inassouvis] (Mbembe 2000), the individual “ être et

avoir ” (be and haves) mix up and define themselves mutually with

a particular strength. The vocabulary used by the “ girls of the

night ” is revealing: indeed, they say that they “work on the

brain” [liggey/job xelam] of their male partners. But they also eat

them [lekk (naf-nafi/ne fuuf, ba suur, ba tas)], before expulsing them; they

“bite their ears” [Yëy noppam].

This “ ethos of predation and manducation ” meets the

superposition of the language categories of consumption and

seduction, as in the expression thiof: the good and expensive fish =

the good looking guy. It can also be said that the expression yaa

ngi lekk sa xaalis [literally: you eat your money] is commonly used to

say that someone has an expensive lifestyle – that he/she throws

away his/her money in futile occupations and pleasures, at the

opposite of the Senegalese population in general that only

consumes what it useful or necessary. When talking about a girl

that does the le mbaraan, one would say that she “ eats ” [lekk] the

money of her companions. Symmetrically, the terms young men refer

to point a sexy girl, “ good/bonne ” to sexually consume, are

largely taken from the language of food and cooking: saf [savory,

spicy], neex [good, pleasant taste], tooy [wet, but also green,

fresh when it concerns food stock].

In addition to the material gains obtained, predation imposes

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itself as an “ art de faire ” with others and with ourselves, to

negotiate one’s own desirability, and furthermore, one’s own social

value. Virtuosity in this matter is as much a source of recognition

as of pleasure:

“Last night, we ate at a good restaurant. That’s my friend

Khady, she has a boyfriend, an Italian, the guy doesn’t refuse

her anything, Bihali!, there was three of us, he didn’t say

anything. Shit, we laughed a lot because Fatim took the

gambas, the most expensive on the menu, and then the guy was

uncomfortable, we could see that he would have wanted us to

order just a hamburger. Me, I must say, I didn’t dare, it

would have been too much if I had also taken an expensive

dish, I just ordered a ginaar [wolof for : chicken], because it

sounds like [niroo] dollar [laughs]. […] Khady, she’s really

good !, as soon as she can, she shares. Guys are on their

knees in front of her, but she never gets done by them… She

takes as much as she can and she shares it with us” (Aïda,

22).

These young women thus appear as artisans or even artists of human

relationships who shape and knead the males' minds. The metaphors

and creative language they use resonate with the practical wit

they deploy in order to always adapt to situations and, finally,

to dominate, which implies the act of “eating” or “consuming”

others. It is important to note that this propensity to talk a

lot, to have a “spicy tongue” [lammin wu saf], is a formal opposition

to certain normative expectations that bear upon most young

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Senegalese women who, on the contrary, are expected to be discreet

and “know their place”. Many of my female interlocutors whom I

questioned about this, seemed to be fully aware of the

transgressive or stigmatizing dimension of their extreme

loquacity. Thus, according to one of my informant,

“ Senegalese guys want a girl who shuts up... You sit there,

you shut up and do what the guy tells you. The truth is that

they are afraid of a girl who is a smart speaker, she risks to

tease and dominate him until he dies! Me, anyway, you won't

shut me up so easily... If a guy comes to me, believe me, I

bite and work [job] him until he cries for his mother!”

(Aissatou, 23)

Some elements of a "subjective geography" of the night

All along these trajectories emerges a very singular way of

“being-in-town”. As “established” doxkat [walkers, loopers], the

“night girls” roam the bars and nightclubs all night long, looking

for financial backers but also for the “place-to-be”. The

overriding impression is that of a continuous movement: the here

and elsewhere seem to share every moment together, in a frenzied

“traversée” of the night time.

Within the clubs, most of the girls remain constantly on the move,

seeming to be only in transit and ready to take off at any moment.

They keep their cell phones glued to their ear - an essential

accessory that allows to exclaim, of course, that “I can't hear you!”.

They have a fast chat with someone before giving a hint of dance

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steps in front of somebody else; light a cigarette quickly smoked.

Circulations are mainly between the bar where they occasionally

greet newcomers, accept or offer a drink, or simply show-off; a

sofa near which they leave a drink half full; the bathroom, in

order to check makeup and hairstyle; and finally the dance floor,

which is intermittently filled - sometimes completely empty, and

then crowdy when the hits of the moment are aired or the classics

of mbalax. Regularly, some girls gaze around, with the expressions

and gestures of a Grande Dame who has never seen such huts and kaw-

kaw. Composing an enticing mine, they hold a male's gaze a few

seconds - and then look away from it. The next moment, they

exchange a few words with a girlfriend, laughing and giving each

other high fives. Finally, sudden starts towards the exit of the

club, cellphone still glued to the ear, turning back to those they

leave behind them: “Be right back”, “I ain't no time”, “See you

later”, just like over-busy working girls... The more noticed the

take off, the more successful it appears.

At the city-scale, the night-time often appears like a frantic race in

search of the most and/or best attended spots. It is very common

to see a girl peeking a look inside a club to evaluate the

ambiance, then immediately leaving if not satisfied. As they

randomly meet in the course of their night circuits, some girls

inform each others about the nocturnal temperature of the day: “I

was at [that place], there's nobody, it's trashy tonight!”, “[this

club] is on top today, we could not even breathe!”. They would

meet somewhere, but were already (potentially) elsewhere. During

my own wanderings, I regularly recognized some faces already seen

earlier in the evening, and sometimes in very distant clubs.

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This constant circulation clearly contrasts with the most common

youth forms of sociabilities in Dakar, more commonly organized at

the smaller scale of the neighborhood. Lacking the precious xalis

[money] allowing to take part in the Dakar's hot nights, young

people generally stay in their neighborhood, sitting on plastic

chairs or on mats, drinking tea and chating. Thus, what is at

stake in this permanent movement? Is the material quest (moving

constantly in search of money/backers) its main or even only

motivation? Should we instead recognize any additional meaning or,

in other words, is it simply moving from one place to another – a

kind of dead time between two “real” moments and two “real”

places? On the contrary, does it fully participate in the nightly

“arts of being and doing”?

Regarding predation/venal sex practices, this movement has a

rather clear strategic function, as bars and nightclubs of Dakar

can be organized into a hierarchy of “specialization” in

prostitutional encounters. At one extremity, we find the most

specialized ones, and thus stigmatized as “boites à caga”; at another

extremity lie the trendiest Clubs in which girls do not venture

without mastering a number of codes (dress, behavior, etc..)

enabling them to blend with the “local” assistance. The general

idea is that the more a bar or nightclub is deemed to be a place

of prostitution, the more depreciated it is by the “ordinary”

night owls. Girls who attend - daily or episodically -

institutions such as the Africa Star, located in Dakar-Plateau,

are considered as directly sexually accessible. There's no

ambiguity in such places, and a male customer can be assured that

he is surrounded by young women engaged in prostitution,

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registered or not. Accordingly, the encounter and the modality

into the sexual exchange itself are quite clear and simple: first

contact at the bar (often over a drink), then immediate

negotiation about the rate, place and duration of the sexual

intercourse. This will typically take place in a small hotel

nearby, renting rooms by the hour and accessed with one of the

many taxis parked in front of the bars9. The payment of the taxi

fare and of the room fall to the man, and are thus added to the

previously negotiated price of the intercourse. If the sexual

exchange is “planned” somewhere else – eg at the client's hotel -

or/and for a longer duration - all night -, the terms of

negotiation and thus the price will of course be modulated

accordingly.

This is what is commonly referred to as a “boite à caga”, which is a

sort of utmost example of specialization. As a result, the Africa

Star - and other similar bar-dancings - are largely shunned by

young women wanting to make their practices more invisible or

ambiguous, not to mention those who only spend a recreational

evening with friends. From the extreme model described here, an

infinity of intermediate places are available. The lesser the

place is specialized, the more one can play with one’s social

façade and status (to prevent the whore stigma, etc.). But,

correspondingly, the more the way in with potential clients/preys

becomes complex, uncertain and, finally, hazy. Places like the

Calypso, Texas Saloon (Dakar Plateau) or, some nights, Casino du

cap-vert (Ngor) occupy a much more fuzzy or floating position on

this “scale of the specialization” [échelle de la stigmatisation et de

9 Even for a very short journey, it's necessary to take a taxi in order to avoid police control.

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l'explicite]. The more one moves along this scale, the more landmarks

are blurred and individual roles are amenable to improvisations.

This uncertainty is largely capitalized by some girls who are able

to adopt very different attitudes depending on the circumstances,

the place where they are and the opportunities they manage. The

impression of vagueness and ambivalence is even reinforced by the

extreme mobility of most of them - their propensity to circulate

all night-long between extremly variously connoted nightclubs.

During a same evening, some may go to the Africa star (or other

bar-like) to try to “eat” some money, before continuing their

journey in far less specialized Clubs, and for reasons quite

different themselves: attending a concert, partying with some

friends or meeting a “buddy” for example. In other words,

regarding what is actually happening (ethnography vs. moral

judgements), the most specialized bars and nightclubs can be

defined as “places of prostitution” far more than “places for prostitutes”:

places and practices [entretiennent un véritable rapport

d'équivalence ou de substitution].

Mutatis mutandis, “Belles de nuit” Vs. “Queens of the night”

11pm, 15 May 2004, Parcelles Assainies. I park in front of the

building in which Nabou - one of my acquaintances among “night

girls” - shares a small flat with a girlfriend. I go up the stairs

and, behind the door left ajar, come to me loud voices mingled

with the beats of an American rap (50cent, In Da Club). I get in and

see Nabou with two other girls competing for access to the only

mirror available in the narrow shower room. On the spot:

18

Nabou yaw!, move your big head!

Come on, it's your butt that takes up center stage!

Hunnn... This is the kind of buttocks you'd love to have!

Wooy Ndeye sama ... And where would I park them?! Fuck you boy!

Fucking hell motha fucka! [collective giggles]10

Caught in the heat of the moment, Nabou invites me to wait:

they'll be ready “leegi leegi” [immediatly, right now]. I am well

aware that “immediately” is a relative term and, indeed, an

appointment “at 11pm” means at the very least midnight or even one

o'clock... But I know, also, there is much to understand during

that special moment of the preparations. Sit and wait, so... But

where? A jumble of clothing litter the floor and the bed,

intermingled with hairbrushes, handbags, cell phones, shoes,

cigarette packs, magazines, chewing gum and various makeups. From

the small CD set placed on the ground, 50cent continues to pour

his characteristic flow, regularly covered by the voices of the

girls crescendo increasing in decibels. At times, they outline a

few dance steps, hands flat on the forehead, face turned towards

the floor and slightly tilted: pure gangsta attitude.

One of Nabou's friends pick up a dress left on the bed, apparently

more becoming than those already tried and rejected. The two

others insist, half-amused, half worried: “Leave it, it will never

fit !”. But she writhes and struggles, gladly burlesque and...

Yes, it doesn’t fit: the dress suddenly splits open with a gloomy

sound. New volleys of insults, laughters, apologies and jokes

about the imposing bottom of the complainant.10 Translated from the wolof. Italics: words originally pronounced in english.

19

At this pace, midnight is soon reached. But the metamorphosis goes

on: rhinestones, sequins, slinky dresses and shorts “sous-fesses

[under buttocks]”, bling-bling jewelry, sophisticated high-heeled

shoes... The ghetto chic style they are particularly fond of is thus

gradually replacing the pagnes, t-shirt, and unkempt hair worn

during a day that was probably as short as the previous night was

long. Nabou and her two friends finally take place in my more than

aging Peugeot 205, complaining - with humor but insistently -

about the small size and lack of class of the vehicle. Restraining

the beginnings of annoyance, I play along and then urge them to

use their “BM-Double-feet” if it suits them better... As a final

diversion, I launch the mbalax compilation that stands in the car

radio and pump up the volume to its maximum. That pulls everybody

together: Viviane11 has a really beautiful voice! The car pulls

away and then the night – the life – begins.

At the time this scene took place, I had already experienced many

times this special moment of the preparations. As the nocturnal

“traversée” approach, the appaearences as well as the personalities

deeply change. The girls begin to speak more English than Wolof or

French - or rather, they do as if, by switching the “motha fucka”,

the “what's up” and the “chill” with the “putain” and the “wooy

sama ndey”. The garments are tried on, exchanged, frantically

discarded and then replaced again, scattered in the room,

retouched, commented; ditto for hairstyles and makeup, the whole

scene ending in an utter confusion of disputes, crazy-sounding

laughters followed by giggling reconciliations. The place then

11 Viviane Ndour, very popular singer in Senegal, especially among young urban women.

20

seems to turn into a dressing room where characters of extravagant

and “dippy” [dof: fofolle] international jet-seters take shape, replacing the

much more calm and even somnanbulist attitudes of the day-time.

One evening, during a meeting quite similar to that described

above, as I asked another informant about the expression “belles

de nuit”, she looked at me quite haughtily before providing an

unequivocal answer: “Are you serious?! There's no belles de nuit

here... Queens of the night only!”

In the girls’ eyes, that moment of the preparations consists in a

transition or a “gateway” between two worlds that they clearly

separate. The idea that, with the arrival of the night, “a new

story” is about to start is constantly stated, both in discourses

and attitudes. As opposed to the daytime that is largely

associated with the heaviness of social control, and the banality

and the restrictions of the ordinary life, the night-time is seen

as an occasion of release and of self-reinvention, that burrows a

deep rupture with the daytime finiteness and routine.

I can't even imagine staying a week without going out at

least three or four nights, this simple idea makes me crazy!

But what do you flee in the daytime?

No, no! This is not a problem of escaping. But simply... I

prefer the night-time. It's more chill, you know. Dakar during

the day, it's a real mess: traffic jams, heat, noise... And

what is there to do during the day? Chores? Going to the

market? No thank you! Daytime, if you dress in light, with

dust, dirt and all the rest, all you have to do is to chuck

out your clothes when you get home.[...] At night, you know,

21

it's like you're somebody else. Everyone is well dressed, you

meet people you don't know... Nobody monitors nobody, you do

what you like. You don't get bothered and you don't feel

ashamed to do what you want![...] And then, you tell your own

story, that's the real life, the big time, you know... you

can never predict how far it will lead you! (Ami, 22).

This configuration of opposition/redistribution is also expressed

in the girls' moods and attitudes. Before the preparations, it is

possible to talk about important or even existential issues:

dreams and hopes, personal history and childhood memories, reasons

of joy and sorrow, etc. After the preparations however, any matter

even a little serious or requiring any emotional involvement is

immediately rejected or simply ignored, “Go away with your toubab

things”, “you really have problems of difficulties...”, “Boy, I really don't

care about your clap-trap, I'm dippy [dof] you know”. Faced with the

fickleness, the careless and the extravagance that are displayed,

the others seem to be only the public of a self-centered show. It

is about hitting the bull's eye, with great fanfare of “quick

wits” and overplayed laughters, etc. It is above all the beauty of

the gesture that is sought, as the form prevails on the substance.

Discussions thus become completely disjointed and attention is not

paid to an interlocutor in particular but to the environment as a

whole. The girls observe, seek, fathom, scan the faces and styles

around in search of acquaintances or potential “targets”, but also

to gauge the effect they produce on the assembly. They embrace

those encountered only a few days ago or even the night before, as

if back from a long journey: “Where were you?”, “It's been a

22

while!”, “I missed you!”, “You seem to be on top tonight”, etc.

While the “jet-seteuse internationale” is acted, the girls seem to be as

one with what they want to narrate of themselves, and thus the

Self seems to coincide with one's appearance all along the search

of the “cool style”. The important factor is to represent in the

Dakar by night, constantly reinvented “theater of the good life”.

Dakar by night, a scene of the “good life”

Casino du Cap-Vert, on a Saturday evening of September 2008: the

dance floor is overcrowded, like every weekend. The bodies sway

their hips until the early hours of the night on Senegalese and

African (mbalax, coupe-décalé, soukous, founana, cabo love), Latin

(salsa and reggaeton), Caribbean (zouk, dance-hall) and North-

american (rap, R & B) sounds. This musical eclecticism - which

remains almost exclusively composed of Black (Atlantic) Music –

echoes with the cosmopolitan attitudes and garments, not least

comparable to “black” or “Afro globalized trends”. Hip-hop (baggy

jeans, caps) or ghetto chic (narrow jeans and designer shirts,

tight neck wide open or immaculate white stretch t-shirt, shoes

lizard-like with pointed toes, hats and sunglasses) for men, sexy

outfits such as dance-hall queen or ghetto glam (hugging dresses

or jeans hipster, tight shorts, Push up necklines, high heels,

hats and caps of all kinds) for women are now the most popular

dressing styles.

Local practices of appropriation and reinvention of a globalized

“Black Modernity” actually reveal how much the material and

symbolical relationship that Dakar youth have with the West is

23

selective. The problem is not to look and act like “Westerners”

and even less like “Whites”. Rather, the issue is to manage to

assert oneself's membership in a global youth culture. There is a

fundamental nuance that must be underlined, as two main poles

appear: the places/ambiances “too much local/senegalese”, and those “for

toubab”. The term “too senegalese” consist in a strong condemnation

of a club that is seen as “bottom-of-the-line”. Are thus

stigmatized the too old or smart-less bars and nightclubs,

comparable to the Ivorian “maquis” or Congolese “nganda”. For

example, one will stay away from the clubs that air only salsa or

african sounds for a mature assembly (40-50 years old) in an

outdated or dilapidated decor, in favour of international sounds

and more gleaming interiors/designs. On the other hand, the places

seen as “for toubab only” are avoided as well. A specific festive

aesthetics thus appears more subtly, hybrid and in-between: fully

impregnated with international trends (music, design, dances,

attitudes, clothing styles, etc.), marking an explicit rejection

of the atmospheres/places considered as “too local”, but without

lapsing into the “toubabisme” which remains also strongly

criticized. This is a modality of reinvention of Africanness,

notably following the model of the “afropolitanism” that Achille

Mbembe (2010) evokes: a cultural, historical and aesthetic

sensibility that plays on the “imbrication between the here and

the elsewhere, the presence of the elsewhere in the here and vice

versa, the relativization of roots and primal belongings and this

way to embrace, knowingly, the foreign, the foreigner and the far-

away, this capacity to recognize one’s face in that of a stranger

and to valorize the traces of the far-away in the near, to

24

domesticate the un-familiar, to weave one’s way into what appears

as opposites” (Mbembe 2010)12. A “political and cultural statement”

and “a stylistics” as well, whose stake is to break away from the

stigma of backwardness and poverty that remains largely associated

to Africa.

This is clearly a question of invention or reinvention that is

going on here, far more than a “mimicry” (Ferguson 2002) in any

case - and even if “now everything happens on the West Coast... up

to America!” as I have often heard in Dakar. One mustn't

underestimate the heuristics of such a multi-barreled allusion.

The Almadies area is clearly identified, because of its location

at the tip of the west of Dakar and Senegal, but also of the

African continent. This sector has become the main location of

business establishments dedicated to nightlife leisures. It can be

observed that over the last fifteen years, the geography of the

festive poles of Dakar has deeply changed, with a net shift from

the historic city center - Plateau - to Almadies. We can imagine,

firstly, that the relatively low urbanization of this area (at

least in the late 1990s and by comparison with the rest of Dakar)

allowed for new constructions; secondly, that its very high

standing immediately confers a prestigious stamp to the new

installations.

The term West Coast, however, also defines a musical style and a

“look”, those of the rappers from the West Coast. The look more

12 Original version in french: “L'imbrication de l'ici et de l'ailleurs, laprésence de l'ailleurs dans l'ici et vice-versa, cette relativisation desracines et des appartenances primaires et cette manière d'embrasser, en touteconnaissance de cause, l'étrange, l'étranger et le lointain, cette capacitéde reconnaître sa face dans le visage de l'étranger et de valoriser lestraces du lointain dans le proche, de domestiquer l'in-familier, detravailler avec ce qui a tout l'air des contraires”.

25

and more “bling-bling” of the young Dakar night-owls is thus

simultaneously designated, revealing the undeniable influence of

hip-hop and ghetto styles. The older styles (that of the “évolué”:

suit and tie, broadly) is thus relegated to the status of

Antiquité (antiquated/old-fashioned) by new figures of success and

prestige embodied by the Senegalese migrants who left for the U.S.

or Europe. This material conversion is certainly indicative of a

moral shift of great importance, as very significant of the new

juvenile poles of identification and material cultures related to

them. Thus, “it is the great revolution in Dakar' nightclubs

nowadays. Sometimes I feel like I am abroad, in the U.S., it's the

same atmosphere as in the rap video clips... And the more the guys

are boasting, the more the ambiance (atmosphere) is a success!”

(Khady, 24).

The attendance of this nocturnal universe thus appears primarily

as a matter of aesthetics: of yourself, of the others, of places,

in their interactions and reciprocal effects. More importantly,

what makes a place beautiful in the eyes of those who frequent it

- what gives it its high standard and makes that one values it as

much as he feels valued by it - is its newness: not only because it

is a new place (recently opened or newly refurbished), but also

because it echoes trends seen as very modern [d'aujourd'hui],

which is almost synonymous with what is going on elsewhere. The Dakar by

night thus appears as a window open to the world, “an invitation to

travel”, a trip to the brand new and the unknown that allows to

“contemplate a new possible society.” A “nightbird aventuress”

once told me:

26

“When I see the new nightclubs, I tell myself that Senegal is

on its way to development. It is in those places that you

really see the changes... not when staying at home, I mean.

You see everything that is new: the sounds, design, clothing,

dance... Everything. And then you feel that Senegal is up-to-

date. It makes me proud, in a way. [...] In some places, I

feel ... I don't know ... like I am a tourist visiting unkown

places. [Laughter] You know, in Senegal, we have this proverb:

“Ku du toxu doo xam fu dëkk neexe” [who never moves can't know where

it's good to live] ... That means... you must be curious in

life, you must travel, whatever. [...] Yes sure, sometimes I'm

impressed, but I'd rather die than showing it! [Laughs] That's

the real class, the true style: discovering things and acting

as if you already knew them... as if you were not surprised, I

mean. If you go somewhere with eyes wide open like a fish,

undoubtedly people there will tell themselves “This girl is a

kaw kaw [Redneck, Broussard], she knows nothing about

nothing !”. Themselves, they just know nothing, but everyone

pretends to know, this is what we call feeling. Here, Senegal,

it is the social living [laughs] you know... we are poor, all we

have is the feeling.” (Zeyna, 23).

The blasé attitude (acting like a regular) is an important feature

of what might be called the jet-set attitude. The terms jet-set and

jet seteurs are widely used in Dakar to designate those whose daily

schedule is structured around night-owls’ sociabilities and,

beyond, who bring in noctambulism as a social marker. Those terms

do not portray a small elite that could be defined by its ability

27

to assume a lavish lifestyle of “true millionaire” but primarily

refer to a set of postures and attitudes: blasé (never show

surprise or admiration), giving the impression of being “at home”

anywhere including the trendiest Clubs, etc. It also relates to a

way of always being (and showing-off) at the place-to-be, which

implies a particular way of moving within the nocturnal world:

always in motion, “traverser” Dakar all night long. The jet-set

attitude thus evokes a population composed of individuals with

very heterogeneous sociocultural and economic status, but

nevertheless sharing a good knowledge of certain cosmopolitan and

festive codes that allow them to operate a distinction between the

“real knowers” of the “global society” on the one hand, and the

others, fuddy-duddy [kaw-kaw] on the other hand. In other words,

more than “avoir” (having) the jet-set attitude it is all about

“savoir” (knowing) - even if the “savoir-paraitre” (knowing the

how to appear) constitutes its most immediate expression. The true

social and economic stature of each is of little importance, and

the real stake is to be able to give an illusion by adopting the

jet-set allure as it is conveyed by the media (music videos, television

series, films) in particular, but also by the local figures of

success – incarnated by some migrants, artists and athletes.

Hence, the Dakar by night can be seen as an “espace de conviction” (a

space of conviction/stated projection of the self): a scene for

the spectacle of one's own magnificence, as invented and/or

fantasized. In a context of material frustration widely shared,

the ability to display a posture of detachment, to present

yourself as being free from needs and want and therefore available

to devote oneself to the satisfaction of desires and pleasure-

28

seeking is at the basis of certain distinctive strategies to which

the Dakar by night provides a privileged setting. The actors offer to

each other the show of their participation to the good life. They

collectively participate to an operation of social, cultural and

material (if not geographical) transposition, blurring de facto the

boundaries that separate illusion/fiction and reality.

This is a fundamental aspect of the construction of the Dakar by

night as a social and cultural Elsewhere: the shared desire to

invent a décalage (discrepancy) and to shape a change of scenery.

Just as the modern consumption acts are “ways to satisfy desires

that identify with highly valued lifestyles”, this consumption of

places and atmospheres evocative of modernity constitutes a means

to claim a social identity, to express a desired position and,

ultimately, to define oneself.

“Dressing up, being on top of the style I mean, is a way to

respect yourself I think. When you go out it is not to show

your problems. All you want is to forget all your troubles.

[...] When I go out, I just want everybody to look at me and

say: this girl, sure she has something in her pocket, she

really is someone.” (Astou, 22).

This short extract demonstrates how the search for personal

aesthetics is serving a broader goal of self invention: “someone

who has something”. The decoration and design of the Clubs should

also resonate with those efforts of self-presentation and those

“pratiques d'arrogance” (Bazenguissa-Ganga 1997), ie the exhibition of

material attributes supposed to evoke the individual's social

29

standing and economic weight. One girl, a regular at hot parties

and trendy spots, uses a meaningful metaphor:

“You don't wrap up a beautiful jewel in newspaper, do you ? It

spoils it... It surely needs a pretty box! Personaly, les

endroits moyens (the so-so places) I don't even put a foot

there, they are not worthy of me, they spoil my name [yaq].

[...] Moyens (so-so) that means it's a bit old, it's too

Senegalese I mean... I don't want to spend my evening with

rednecks [kaw kaw]. I like classy spots, very blow you know.”

(Vanessa, 23).

In other words, the concern with the aesthetics of the bar or

nightclub is closely linked with the fact that it reverberates on

the self: it emphasizes and enhances it, or conversely decreases

it - “spoils” it. The effort of self-distinction thus represents a

set of mirrors by which one can test one’s self-image, especially

in light of a certain idea of the “good life”.

Regarding the predation strategies undertaken by the “Night girls”,

this logics of transposition between places (bars & nightclubs) and claimed

(or performed) social identities covers more specific issues. Many of my

interlocutors reported that the bars and nightclubs they frequented

define them – in positive or negative. Thus, some of them who are

used to going “fishing” in some of the most exclusive and trendiest

bars and nightclubs, seemed to incorporate a part of the prestige

that is associated to such places – notwithstanding, in fine, their

reasons for going there. This configuration appears even more

clearly in the case of the most specialized spots: “It's not good,

30

it smells bad there, the smell stays on your clothes and even on

your body”, “It is a place that spoils you, if you stay too long,

you might feel very weak”, etc. Frequenting the Africa Star, for

example, where one does not venture without a “good” reason,

doesn't present any technical difficulty. Men come in search of a

girl with whom they negotiate price, place and duration, as I have

mentioned above, following a relatively small number of scenarios.

But what the girls gain in ease of negotiation, they lose it at the

same time both in terms of social invisibility, economics of the

self (capacity and reputation) and, simultaneously, opportunities

for additional earnings and/or opportunities to re-convert the

relationship. The Africa Star, under such an angle, is a place for

beginners whose social background and lack of cultural and

experiential capitals prevent from aiming higher - at least

temporarily -, and/or for “real caga” who “don't respect themselves”

according to several interlocutors, the latter being engaged in

practices little different from those they condemn but according to

different formalities, partners and locations. In this sense, the

most competent - those who are able to embody the most varied roles

and to deploy their strategies in the largest variety of places -

are also those who manage to create the most numerous and

beneficial occasions, whilst getting around the stigma with the

better cunning.

The issue of the frequented bars and nightclubs thus must be

understood in its intricacies with the knowledge and skills on

which depend, more generally, individual trajectories.

3. Cosmopolitan skills: beyond the career “of the night”, the

31

extraversion trajectories

The ability to offer to others the spectacle of one's

participation to the good life and, hence, to produce for oneself

a sense of intimate dépaysement, implies the possession of a

specific symbolic capital that I synthesize as the “cosmopolitan

skills”. I mean by that, a minima, a highly variable ability to

present oneself as a connoisseur of worldly “trends” - skills that

may be re-converted in various techniques of predation and in

different forms of social power. The cosmopolitan skills lie in

the interface between the cultural - knowledge, know-how and skill

that can be valorized and mobilized socially - and the political –

as a space in which, in particular, to negotiate and assert

personnal authority and prestige are negotiated and stated

following different strategies and display distinctive style.

Meanwhile, these specific skills and knowledge determine the

individual's value: they have a considerable weight on the places

the girls are able to attend, the type of relationships they can

negotiate and, ultimately, the social image/identity they can

defend. Moreover, according to most of my interlocutors, the

crucial factor to determine who is the “real caga” is primarily

based on judgments of ignorance, as was well expressed by this

young woman :

The guys I'm going with [I sleep with], themselves, they have

no idea of my value [jar]. I am the only one to know for real

what I am worth, my real value I mean [Dayo].

What kind of “knowledge” are you talking about?

32

It is a knowledge ... I don't know ... A knowledge that gives

you some power! You see, for example, you show a guy what he

wants or what he needs to see, but only to gain more

afterwards [materially]. You become acquainted with him, but

you only show the face that you want to show. You manage your

things, you play the seduction game as well as possible

[jonge], you “work” [liggey] him hard so that he thinks: this is

how much I must give, I have to give a lot to this girl,

because if I don't she's going to leave... I mean, that girl

is not a caga that you pick up like that, only to satisfy

yourself taf taf [quickly], she really is someone. You see, you

really need to know how, it is knowledge that is not

accessible to anyone. If I see a caga, I tell myself that

it's a girl who just knows nothing, Ndeysaan, a real ignorant!

Here in Senegal, we say it goes like this: bala ngay xam, xamadi

rey la [proverb: until you know, ignorance will kill you], it

is a way to express that, this thing, ignorance, is not good

at all. You need to think a lot, you need to understand the

situation to be very crafty [muus], otherwise you're going to

be the loser. (Fatym, 25).

One may wonder if that reference to a so-called “ignorance” is not

first and foremost evocating a (supposed) lack of reflexivity - an

incapacity to take a degree of distance with one's very own

personal experiences -, that is to say lack of “souci de soi”

(Foucault 1984). Hence, the major difference between the “real

caga” and the others would lie in the relative intensity of “one's

self-appreciation by which one becomes the very subject of his/her

33

own actions” [“le rapport à soi par lequel on se constitue comme

sujet de ses actes”] (Ibid.). This does not mean that some girls

(the so-called “real” caga) would actually be unable to regard

themselves as moral subjects. Rather, this so-called inability,

however its “veracity”, is a fundamental argument of distinction:

a way of defining oneself as opposed to which is at the very basis of

any self-understanding and self-identity enunciation (the

dialectics of identity/alterity).

The ability to avoid the stigmatization and to “narrate your own

story” thus depends on the social, cultural and relational skills

on which each individual can relie. The educational level and/or

the familial milieu (the inherited capital, to put it quickly) constitute

discriminating parameters from the beginning of the nocturnal

adventure. But knowledge and skills progressively acquired through

practical experience are even more pivotal issues: that is to say,

in terms of “career” (Becker 1985). The longitudinal observation

of these girls' paths thus disclose, step by step, some social and

cultural trajectories of extraversion which constitute the true/actual issues

of the careers “of the night”. The last part of this contribution

deals with this symbolic capital that is accumulated in the Dakar by

night - that is to say, an examination of the city as a place of

learning or a “laboratory of the self”. This is a problem that is

much more “political” than it appears at first glance: it lies in

what might be called a cosmo-politics that relates to a questioning in

terms of “value politics” and “style politics”.

The discourse and attitudes of the young Dakaroises encountered in

this study introduce to the idea of a shifting or alternative

socialization: a progression towards the unexpected; towards a

34

future that is, literally, extra ordinary. These ways of producing a

place outside of the moral and social mainstreams refer to a

quasi-glorious vindication of one's own difference/particularity

that is reflexively regarded as fundamentally enhancive.

“When I was younger, when I was 18 or something like that, I

didn't care about anything. I used to follow the girls older

than me and that's it. It is my cousin Codou, the daughter of

my uncle, who first brought me in strange places.[...] She

took me to places I wouldn't have even imagined. But I was too

curious, I wanted to know everything. I was like a kid, I had

a mindset... you see... I was ignorant of a lot of things that

I know now.[...] At that time I was open to any experience.

Every night I would go and meet up with Codou, and then, you

know, we used to go roaming in all bars and nightclubs like

crazy .[...] I met a lot of French guys in those days. They

were here [in Senegal] for a few months, they gave their money

like that... Soooo easily. They fell in love like this [she

snaps her fingers]. If you were black and not too ugly, they

just loved you. They were real idiots, excuse me, huh, but

stupid jerk Toubab who think they are always smarter than you

[laughs]. [...] But anyway, I learned a lot of stuff during

this time ... I saw places ... I met people ... The French

that I spoke at that time, it was crazy !... just like scums:

j'm'en fous, Zyva, wesh [French slang terms]...[ Laughter].

That's how the French guys I knew spoke, they were militaries

sometimes. Me, I say, I was a kid, I wanted to learn

everything. But, for sure, I experienced a lot of stuff that

35

many people will never know.” (Mami, 25)

“There was this girl in my neighborhood who started to go out

at night. She often had new clothes, she always had money. She

told me that guys pay for everything: drinks, food,

everything. They “gérer” (manage) whatever. I didn't know

anything about the “milieu” at that time. I couldn't even

really speak French, I left school when I was a kid. Well, and

then I started to go out with her. At first I was a bit

complexed. I felt like a kaw-kaw, y'know? [Laughs]... And then

you start to learn the life! You earn money easily, you

frequent toubab guys that teach you French, with real toubab

phrases I mean!” (Astou, 24).

The idea of social trajectories gradually formed clearly appears

through the autobiographical narratives of my interlocutors. The

criteria of “distinction” and “belonging/membership” are pivotal

issues in these personnal stories. The “fictions of the self”

(Eakin 1985) are closely articulated to the prestigious arguments

of the “cultural extraversion” (Bayart 1999) that the girls

gradually accumulate. Male “preys” (i.e. sex clients, mbaraan,

boyfriends, etc.) are clearly used as cultural advisers, while the

girls play a role of culture brokers or “individu-frontière”. In other

words, their predation targets are as much symbolic as economic.

Moreover, distinction and emancipation meet each other in the ways

that these “trajectories of extraversion” become significant: the

issue, once again, is to distinguish oneself from ordinary young

Senegalese who have nothing and then are nothing in a context where

36

“l'avoir et l'être” (the having and the being) are completely

mixed up – where, in fact, you can judge a book by its cover.

“Now I could not live like the other Senegalese girls. Nah!

When you get used to this life, to those good things, it's

over. I will not play the maid [mbindaan] for somebody,

staring down and everything. I make my own way now, there's

nobody to tell me orders .[...] Where I am now, I don't feel

like I am a Toubab [White, Westerner], hey, I'm not crazy, I

know I am a true Black African [dëgg-dëgg]... Walahi! Black is

beautiful, huh?! [Laughs] I mean, I don't feel like the

Senegalese girls any longer, I have learned a lot of stuff

compared to them. I am more evolved than they are, I

understand life better.” (Matty, 24).

The vehemence or even violence that are also often expressed

reveal the political dimension of these trajectories: becoming

independent, telling your own story involve a domination of the

others, while “equality” does not exist. Hence, a “culture inédite de la

liberté comme mode de domination” (a novel culture of freedom as a

modality of domination) (Mbembe 2000) becomes apparent.

- You want to know what I'm doing with my money?! Money, it's

nothing and everything at the same time... You just need it

for a living. It's like that, if you have nothing, people

don't respect you.

- Living ...?

- Yeah, living... It means that you can say “fuck your mother”

37

to someone if you don't agree with him or if he wants you to

do things that you don't! Me, I can't live as if I was a

nobody! That's why you need money, because if you have nothing

you just do what people want you to do! Especially here in

Senegal, you know ... People always want to look at what you

are doing, it's so heavy you know... Men, if they start to

fund you [gérer], they think you belong to them. It's that

simple! If you can get enough money not to rely on anybody,

it's you who decides for yourself. That's how one should live,

correct?!

- Oh, ok ... I understand, money and life that is saying “fuck

your mother” according to you?! [Laughs]

- Yeah, fuck your mother, your father, and whoever you

want ... Except me! [Laughs] The boys, if I have money in my

pockets, you see them coming to me, nicely, and all that. They

are just like dogs, Bilahi!, they have nothing and they come

begging you. And then you feel fine, because the idiots who

treated you like a bitch one day, they look up to you as

Madame la Présidente now! I give them a little, sometimes, just

like that, to see the shame on their face. After I tell them:

“No, no, don't say thank you, it's nothing for me!” [Laughs]

Especially the boys, they make me laugh... They talk a lot in

front of their friends “I screwed this girl blahblah ...” But

when they come to you begging pennies, they are like dogs

[laughs]! This is what is good, you see? Being on top. Here in

Senegal, “pareil-pareil” [“same-same”, equality] doesn't exist ...

It's not like in the West/North [kaw]. In Senegal, you are

subordinate or you dominate, but never equal![...]

38

- You think so, really ...?

- Sure ! People here are not very open minded, they have a

mentality... I don't know... they are too Senegalese in their

minds. [...] Me, Bilahi!, I don't care at all, I'm a real

crazy/dippy girl [dof]! Nobody scares me. If somebody is

annoying you, you must crush him like this [she breaks the

match she was using as a toothpick], otherwise you will never

be in peace.” (Aida, 22)

As a conlusion: Cosmopolitanism as posture, the city as accomplice

It seems quite obvious that participating in (and composing) a

cosmopolitan lifestyle has an economic and social cost that

everyone is not able to afford at an equal level. Hence, the

problem must be considered upstream, that is to say according to

the meaning that we ascribe to the notion of cosmopolitanism

itself. If we consider it primarily as a condition or a state,

according to a number of criteria considered as representing a

kind of minimum program (including: global mobility, possession of

certain property/wealth and access to certain social spheres such

as a “Noblesse d'Etat”), then indeed its definition remains

largely exclusive. It points, broadly, to a small elite (politico-

economic, academic, etc.) and remains inseparable from the

possession of capitals, not only economically but also culturally

and socially. One is a cosmopolitan individual because one has a

“train de vie”, a social network, certain forms of social and cultural

know-how, a professional experience/status that allow one to see

oneself – and to be considered by others - as such. And this all

39

the more because the members themselves of this elite detain the

power to define and (re)produce the criteria, highly

discriminatory, of who and how one belongs to the “Cosmopolitan

club”. It goes full circle, allowing for studies - very

interesting for that matter – on the transnational strategies of a

few “privilégiés” [happy few].

But on the other hand, if we look at this cosmopolitanism rather

as a posture, the question becomes at once more complex, less clear,

but perhaps more heuristic. By cosmopolitan posture, I mean a way of

being in the world and in society, to formulate aspirations and to

express adherence to certain images and ideas of the good life,

success and prestige. Some ways to define the value of things and

beings, to prioritize some ways of being and doing (the “Art de

faire” and the “styles”) as well - all representing ferments for

specific “politics of value” and “of style”. At that stage, of

course, arises the question of the “jury” in front of which one

evaluates one’s cosmopolitan credibility and, more broadly, one’s

social value. In line with some analyses presented in this paper,

it should be emphasized that the value (whether that of an object

or an individual) does not exist in itself but is always

negotiated in and through relationships: there are only politics of

value (Appadurai 1986).

Over the preceding pages, I wanted to show that the Dakar by night is

a scene that fits remarkably with “fictions of the self”

introducing oneself as an individual from here and elsewhere at once -

cosmopolitan. It is a favored arena for acquisition, demonstration

and, ultimately, validation of one's own “cosmopolitan value”,

even if all of this looks like a sham [“faux-semblant”], a performed

40

identity (but are there other kinds of identity ?) and, in short,

a “frime” [French for “show-off”] in its primary meaning of “doing

as if...”. Nevertheless, from this angle, cosmopolitanism as

social skills or knowledge cannot be limited neither to a small

minority of dominant/haves, nor to an interpretation in strict

terms of class relations (elites/popular masses).

Without doubt, at an ethnographic level, we haven’t put enough

emphasis either on the tricks deployed by the “subordinates” to

capture “the exteriority upon which the dominant base their power”

(Bayart 1999), nor on alternative ways through which one asserts

his/her membership to the “world society” (Ferguson 2002): as an

actor, and not only as a powerless spectator.

One can well imagine that an individual is not socially recognized

or identified as “cosmopolitan” (that is to say, doesn't possess

both the material and symbolical arguments that constitute such a

“condition/state”) but still that he/she wants and/or imagines

him/herself as such and thus organizes his/her existence according

to what he/she sees as modern and cosmopolitan. The consequences

(in terms of identity, but also social, political and possibly

economical) induced by these strategies of identification are by

no means negligible - and there is no reason why we should not

grant a real attention to such configurations. They become even

more meaningful if we examinate them in terms of careers, with the

idea of longitudinal and gradual learnings (eg from the career of

“the night” to extraversion trajectory).

At this point, it is of interest to remind of what G. Simmel said

about the “Fashionable person”, I propose to replace by

“cosmopolitan individual”:

41

“The cosmopolitan individual [fashionable person] is regarded with

mingled feelings of approval and envy; we envy him as an

individual but approve of him as a member of a set or group.

Yet even this envy has a peculiar coloring. There is a shade

of envy which includes a species of ideal participation in the

envied object itself…The moment we envy an object or a person,

we are no longer absolutely excluded from it.” (Simmel 1971)

Following this idea of envy as an ideational or “embryonic”

expression of ownership and belonging - fertilized through desires

and greed -, it can be argued that the paradigm of “lèche vitrine”

(the frustrated spectator, unable to go through the mirror or to

acquire what she or he is longing for) supports a fundamentally

simplistic interpretation of African youths' arts of participation

to cultural globalization - and to the cosmopolitan aspirations

that follow from it. And even if they are not conform to what is

considered good, desirable or legitimate according to the

developmentalist perspective or in the eyes of a certain moral

conservatism.

Of course, individuals' expressions or postures that assert

themselves in this way as cosmopolitan are not all identical to

“The” Cosmopolitanism as it got its title of nobility among the

national internationalized elites, and they hence can seem vulgar

to some “big men” (eg sober suit and tie Vs. hip hop/ghetto

style). This doesn't invalidate them but, rather, is an invitation

to highlight the plurality and heterogeneity - and the internal

dynamics - of that field of study: mutual constitution of centers

42

and peripheries, feedback loops, practices of symbolical and

material poaching, the ability to grab social and cultural codes

and/or the propensity to reinterpret them within a critical

purpose, and so on.

It seems clear to me that the alternative social trajectories

invented by the “Nightbird adventuress” in Dakar - as hidden by

moral judgments as they are - constitute examples of a crafty and

fundamentally vitalized cosmopolitanism. These young women surely

demonstrate an art of “being-in-town” that is at the same time an

art of “being-in-the-world”, the body, the city and the imaginary

as accomplices. Moreover, they encourage us to follow the

(sometimes harsh) small and winding paths, paved with the fictions

of the self and the multiple opportunities the City offers, rather

than the comfortable ballads suggested by the meta-narratives of

modernity (Englund & Leach 2000). The Metropolis, beyond doubt, is

full of these small arteries that no map mentions...

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