Enacting Utopia(s) in Times of Contention – the Creation of Imaginaries through the Khartoum Sit-in

The city of Khartoum, caught in the middle of fights between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, is currently experiencing its destruction and leaving millions of people displaced. But before the capital city had become one of the epicenters of the war, it was also the locus of one of the largest sit-ins in the country during the years of the Third Sudanese Revolution. The sit-in in front of the military headquarters or ‘itisam al-qiyadah – one of several set up all over the country in April 2019 – lasted for 58 days, during which president Omar al-Bashir was ousted, but more importantly it became the physical and spatial manifestation of what some called “the liberated land”. Aside from the physical restructuring, the setting up of infrastructures and the implementation security measures to accommodate people living and occupying the space, it also became to represent an alternative to the existing governing powers and governance structures. Against this background and based on a triangulation of narrative and expert interviews, as well as visual analysis this paper aims to trace the creation and development of the sit-in space and understand the imaginaries that were created through the occupation of the military headquarters. It aims to understand the role of the creation of an alternative ecology during times of contention in catalyzing new imaginaries and the enactment of prefigurations. But it also asks, in how far already existing differences and rifts were also present in the sit-in and how these possibly affected the further trajectory of the revolution. Finally, it sheds light on the violent dispersal of the sit-in and how this event affected the perceptions of those imaginaries.