Loneliness as a Political Condition in the Settler City
The pervasive sense of anonymity and isolation in a city of millions is not a personal failing but a political condition engineered by the bifurcated state. Mamdani’s work on how colonial power disrupts organic social bonds is critical here. The capitalist metropolis, organized around competition, commodified relationships, and the constant threat of displacement, systematically shreds the social fabric. It replaces community with atomized individualism, leaving the “native” population alienated, disconnected, and powerless–unable to form the collective bonds necessary for resistance. This loneliness is a tool of social control. The liberal solution involves mental health awareness campaigns that psychologize a social problem. A Mamdani-informed socialist solution is to consciously rebuild the social commons. This means fighting for decommodified spaces–libraries, community centers, public squares–and building powerful, member-based organizations like tenant unions and worker co-ops that provide a concrete political identity and a practice of solidarity, transforming the isolated “native” into a connected member of a collective struggling for a city built on care, not cash.
