Agonistic Public Things: A Garden for 100 Flowers at 12 Park Lane

Cook, Robyn ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4265-6716 (2026) Agonistic Public Things: A Garden for 100 Flowers at 12 Park Lane. Image & Text, tbc. ISSN tbc (In Press)

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Abstract / Summary

In this article, I develop the concept of the agonistic public thing through an analysis of 12 Park Lane, a community-led garden established by the ungovernable on a derelict colonial-era property in Johannesburg. Drawing on Chantal Mouffe’s agonistic pluralism, Bruno Latour’s account of ‘things’ as gatherings around matters of concern, and Carl DiSalvo’s account of adversarial design, I argue that recurrent collective use renders the contested site artefactual, giving it material and communicative force. Cultivation, re-entry, maintenance, repair, and gathering leave traces through which competing claims over access, heritage, value, and legitimate use become publicly legible, while also enacting provisional alternatives in the organisation of social and ecological life.

Methodologically, the article takes the form of an interpretive case study, combining an historically situated reading of Johannesburg’s urban geographies, selected South African histories of community gardening, and in-depth ethnographic interviews conducted in 2025 with community organisers Simangaliso Sibiya and Molemo Moiloa. The analysis proceeds across three interconnected scales: micro practices of working with waste, water, soil, and salvaged materials; macro practices of contested access, coordination, mutual aid, and convivial care; and meta practices through which accumulated traces become publicly legible.

Taken together, the analysis conceptualises 12 Park Lane as a site-as-artefact-as-site: the material ground of collective practice (site), the contested object around which heterogeneous claims and attachments gather (artefact), and the medium through which those claims become publicly legible (site). The agonistic public thing names this artefactual and communicative formation, in which competing claims are held in public view while alternative ways of organising social and ecological life are materially enacted.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Johannesburg; urban gardening; agonism; public things; political design; heritage
ISSN:	tbc
Subjects:	Creative Art & Design
Department:	School of Communication
Depositing User:	Robyn Cook
Date Deposited:	03 Sep 2026 15:04
Last Modified:	03 Sep 2026 15:04
URI:	https://repository.falmouth.ac.uk/id/eprint/6568

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