City of Clones: Facsimiles and Governance in São Paulo, Brazil

Abstract

São Paulo, Brazil, is a megacity defined by formal and informal patterns of urbanization. Informally urbanized spaces are not absent of state intent, despite appearances. Rather, the state’s apparent absence is itself a form of governance: such populations are decisively left to die. Such abandonment has, paradoxically, given rise to a number of grassroots-led social and spatial practices for survival, agency, and self-governance. Even so, these auto-constructed responses and conditions contribute to the reproduction of urban political order in surprisingly unoriginal and routinely recognizable ways. I argue that these unexceptional informal practices can be understood as ‘facsimiles’ of their formal institutional originals, or counterparts. Using the examples of cloned cars I show that the facsimile and the original are, for all practical purposes, the same in form and function. I further argue that facsimiles do not exist outside of political authority, but are a byproduct and a component of it. The consequence is that the facsimile and the original are indistinguishable in their bureaucratic deployment, recognition and acceptance as part of social and spatial order.