Ambivalent temporalities of mega-infrastructures in Lamu, Kenya

Abstract

This article, analysing politics of Lamu Port in Kenya, explores the ambivalent temporalities of mega-infrastructures as they unfold at different intersections of state politics, megaprojects, and everyday life. Although at its inception Lamu Port was central to state development strategies and local contestations that ensued as a response, with faltering project development goals, this infrastructure has gradually receded into a material, symbolic, and affective background of contestations and everyday life. Fishermen displaced by the new port construction precariously adapt to new material conditions. The port itself, once deemed threatening to local livelihoods or an anticipatory possibility of “development”, is overshadowed by changing state politics, leadership, and political dramas that ensue. In this context, some actors start to question whether the project will materialise at all, perceiving the lack of infrastructure development as more threatening than the new port itself. Centering these dynamics, the article foregrounds the analytical and methodological value of studying infrastructure over time, specifically how ambivalent temporalities of megaprojects demonstrate that infrastructure––once spectacular, disruptive, or anticipatory––gradually recedes into the backdrop, becoming one nebulous node within multiple layers of state-society relations, contestations, and everyday life.