Dakar’s flood drainage canals: assembling urban subjectivities, transforming political spaces

In the context of rapid environmental change, research on adaptation politics highlights the role of power in socio-ecological change, offering insights on how authority, knowledge and subjectivity shape adaptation pathways. Less attention has been given to how authority emerges, subjectivities become politicized and transformative adaptation scales up. This paper addresses these limitations, drawing on a Deleuzian reading of subjectivity, prioritizing analytically immanent capacities and contradictory events. This framework is applied to the case of Pikine, an informal Dakar settlement, where intensifying floods in the 1990s were managed through drainage canal construction, authorized by the president. The paper links this decision to historical legacies and unexpected events, including floods, structural adjustments, the emergence of a coalition of youth organizations, and changing government authority. It invites policymakers to foster the self-organization capacity of emerging coalitions of vulnerable groups and to leverage the openings offered by moments of crisis.