In South Africa, the shack settlement has become a site of acute political intensity in recent years. However, political action organized from the shack settlement is frequently presented as being outside of the domain of the political—as a spasmodic response to deprivation, as criminal or consequent to external conspiracy. This paper argues that liberal, as well as some currents of Marxist and nationalist thought, have demonstrated an inability, or refusal, to recognize popular political agency in the shack settlement. It suggests that Partha Chatterjee’s work on the idea of political society, and Ananya Roy’s thinking about subaltern urbanism provide useful analytical tools to enable more effective recognition of political agency in the shack settlement. However, it notes that while it is necessary to think the shack settlement as a particular situation, it is also important to be attentive to insurgent modes of political agency that transcend that situation.
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