Axes of Hope: Flights of Fancy in Recent Work on Urban Congo.

This article examines expressions of hope within dystopian urban spaces in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) through the concept of "the hole" (le trou/libulu), as depicted in Sinzo Aanza's 2015 novel *Généalogie d'une banalité* and the 2016 documentary film *The Tower: A Concrete Utopia* by Sammy Baloji and Filip De Boeck. It contrasts the literal digging for mineral wealth in the mining community of Lubumbashi with the vertical aspirations embodied by a makeshift tower in Kinshasa, exploring how these projects reflect both the material constraints and utopian impulses of their contexts. Despite the failures and limitations of these ventures—marked by extractivist legacies, infrastructural decay, and social exclusion—the article argues that they create "spaces of hope" through acts of resilience, collective desire, and imaginative engagement with the urban present. Drawing on philosophical notions of hope and alterity, it suggests that such efforts, even when unrealized or self-sabotaging, illuminate possibilities for alternative futures amid enduring socio-economic challenges.