Abstract

The turn to optimism makes figures of progress, consumption, self-making and empowerment appear in various genres of chick-lit. These narratives, however, are often still shaped by a depressive tone that is distinct from one that says that women have more options than happy-ever-after, even while heterosexual romance remains a structuring force. This article takes the Ghanaian web-series An African City as its example to explore this ambivalence. An African City offered its first season in 2014 and was immediately received as ‘Africa’s own Sex and the City’, praised for challenging the image of a backward Africa, while criticised for offering an unrealistic account of life for urban African women. The series is set around the lives of five women, one of whom plays the leading role as narrator. The ‘African city’ serves as another character, rather than a mere backdrop for the action to unfold. I argue that the various characters perform an ongoing ambivalence towards progress, always stuck in a look backward. It is not simply that the quest for romance fails as part of the drama, but that the drama of failure itself folds onto both the African city and African women as figures that remain eternally stuck in their relation to the temporalities that accrue around modernity.