publication

In Haiti, urbanization through "slumification" has generated an overwhelming sense of crisis. In this article I trace the history of the urban crisis and consider some examples of the making of slums in order to show how the spatial form of the city has been shaped by a peculiar dialectic between the state and statelessness. In Haiti, this dialectic takes shape in Port-au-Prince, where people feel they ought to be well within the reach of the state and yet feel excluded or left out. Ostensibly the center of political and administrative power, Port-au-Prince has long been regarded as an ungoverned space and as a concrete image of the absence of the state. In this article, I argue that the problems of Port-au-Prince stem not from an absence of governance but rather from a particular approach to governance—what I call the art of not governing.