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Abstract
This paper focuses on the dusty atmospheres of Bargny, a coastal town and industrial suburb of Dakar, Senegal, to understand how its inhabitants narrate, negotiate, and protest drifts and clouds of dust, sand and smoke. Once a traditional Lebou fishing village, Bargny now faces severe environmental and health challenges, with dust particles exceeding national limits by 400 times and contributing to rising respiratory diseases. The residents, facing threats from a colonial cement factory, a coal plant, and a bulk port, actively protest these developments while also grappling with the ruination and loss of their homes to the encroaching sea. This paper thinks different forms of sedimentary particles and their particularities along the shore together – the increase of particles in the air and the loss of sand along the coast – as they become central to residents’ geopolitical demonstrations and create a tumultuous and contested coastal atmosphere marked by breathlessness.
Bionote
Charline Kopf is a postdoctoral researcher in anthropology at the University of Oslo. Her work revolves around questions of history and memory in the postcolonial context, as well as infrastructures, mobilities and borders in West Africa. Her new project is on dust and air pollution in Senegal.
