The politics of skeletons and ruination: living (with) debris of the Two Fishes Hotel in Diani Beach, Kenya

Abstract

ABSTRACT Up until the 1990s, the Two Fishes Hotel on the South Kenya Coast was among the ten major hotels in Diani Beach. Today, the consequences of capitalist ruination on tourism can be observed in the decay of some once prospering hotels along on one of East Africa’s most popular tourist shores. In this article, I engage with the ruins of the Two Fishes Hotel in Diani Beach by taking as point of departure what the people who live with the ruins can tell us about how they affect their lives. I explore what their perspectives reveal about processes of deterioration and revitalization of capitalist projects like tourism, how affect and agency are engendered in them, and consider how they relate to online observations from a Facebook group dedicated to the ruins of this specific hotel. I argue that the various reappropriations of contemporary liminal spaces like hotels in decay show how infrastructures in the process of ruination have a social life of their own, reflect and give context to the wider political circumstances they are embedded in, and speak to individual and societal socio-economic challenges beyond national borders.