Strategic building of spectacles and monuments for urban esthetics and redevelopment in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso

Abstract

Abstract: Building on discourse analysis, field notes, and archival research, this paper examines the interconnection between spectacles, monuments construction, and forced eviction through the study of the major urban renewal project ZACA which induced the displacement and resettlement of about 50,000 people in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. The analysis delves into the state’s engagement in urban transformation for socio-economic development to achieve its esthetic, productive, and utilitarian vision of the city to meet local, regional, and global consumers’ needs. The paper highlights how the image of FESPACO (Pan-African Film Festival of Ouagadougou) and other major cultural events are used to portray the city of Ouagadougou as the capital of African cinema and how that image was subsequently associated with urban renewal and the forced displacement of residents of old inner neighborhoods in Ouagadougou. It demonstrates that spectacles and monuments’ socio-economic and political production feed each other to displace signs, symbols, and people who do not fit the official discourse of city esthetics that they generate, sustain, maintain, and reproduce. It concludes that while cinematographic spectacle can be used to marginalize and remove the urban poor from decrepit neighborhoods, it can also denounce social injustice inflicted upon the urban poor characterized as less desirable in building city esthetic for capital accumulation. Keywords: Spectacles, urban esthetics, forced eviction, marginalization, capital accumulation.