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The notion of the postcolonial metropolis has gained prominence in the last two decades both within and beyond postcolonial studies. Disciplines such as sociology and urban studies, however, have tended to focus on the economic inequalities, class disparities, and other structural and formative aspects of the postcolonial metropolises that are specific to Western conceptions of the city at large. It is only recently that the depiction of postcolonial metropolises has been addressed in the writings of Suketu Mehta, Chris Abani, Amit Chaudhuri, Salman Rushdie, Aravind Adiga, Helon Habila, Sefi Atta, and Zakes Mda, among others. Most of these works probe the urban specifics and physical and cultural topographies of postcolonial cities while highlighting their agential capacity to defy, appropriate, and abrogate the superimposition of theories of Western modernity and urbanism. These ASNEL Papers are all concerned with the idea of the postcolonial (in the) metropolis from various disciplinary viewpoints, as drawn from a great range of cityscapes (spread out over five continents). The essays explore, on the one hand, ideas of spatial subdivision and inequality, political repression, social discrimination, economic exploitation, and cultural alienation, and, on the other, the possibility of transforming, reinventing and reconfigurating the ‘postcolonial condition’ in and through literary texts and visual narratives. In this context, the volume covers a broad spectrum of theoretical and thematic approaches to postcolonial and metropolitan topographies and their depictions in writings from Australia and New Zealand, South Africa, South Asia, and greater Asia, as well as the UK, addressing issues such as modernity and market economies but also caste, class, and social and linguistic aspects. At the same time, they reflect on the postcolonial metropolis and postcolonialism in the metropolis by concentrating on an urban imaginary which turns on notions of spatial subdivision and inequality, political repression, social discrimination, economic exploitation, and cultural alienation – as the continuing ‘postcolonial’ condition.
Although Liverpool is the central theme of this book, the author gives an informed comparative overview of the city in a worldwide context. Chapters examine in detail the cultural social and economic legacy of the city.
The volume assembles fresh treatments on the flâneur in literature, film and culture from a variety of angles. Its individual contributions cover established as well as previously unnoticed textual and filmic source materials in a historical perspective ranging from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first century. The range of topics covered demonstrates the ongoing productivity of flânerie as a viable paradigm for the artistic approach to urban culture and the continuing suitability of flânerie as an analytic category for the scholarly examination of urban representation in the arts. This productiveness also extends to the questioning, re-evaluation, and enhancement of flânerie’s theoretical foundations as they were laid down by Walter Benjamin and others. The work will be particularly relevant for students and scholars of literary studies, film studies and gender studies, as well as for theoretical approaches to flânerie as an important aspect of urban culture.
Over the past decades, the growing interest in the study of literature of the city has led to the development of literary urban studies as a discipline in its own right. The Routledge Companion to Literary Urban Studies provides a methodical overview of the fundamentals of this developing discipline and a detailed outline of new directions in the field. It consists of 33 newly commissioned chapters that provide an outline of contemporary literary urban studies. The Companion covers all of the main theoretical approaches as well as key literary genres, with case studies covering a range of different geographical, cultural, and historical settings. The final chapters provide a window into new debates in the field. The three focal issues are key concepts and genres of literary urban studies; a reassessment and critique of classical urban studies theories and the canon of literary capitals; and methods for the analysis of cities in literature. The Routledge Companion to Literary Urban Studies provides the reader with practical insights into the methods and approaches that can be applied to the city in literature and serves as an important reference work for upper-level students and researchers working on city literature. Chapter 15 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com
What are the different contours of defining a subject? How does a subject form in the act of resilience? This multi-author book explores the concept of a wandering subject, especially in the context of resilience. The wandering subject can be understood as an ever-forming subject through different mobilities. This movement is not just the physical movement compelled by a certain agency but also the various mobilities of the selves of the subject, mobilities through spaces, the interconnections formed with other subjects, and the fluidity between the subject/object/spaces at most times compelled by the spirit of resilience. Each chapter of the book delves into the myriad modalities of movement in spaces that are imagined or real. The space is always one of contestation, be it emerging from gender conflict, or that of a nation or a trauma inflicted by war. In this mode of displacement, either physical, emotional or spiritual (and at times, a seepage of all), the subject evolves and defines itself beyond the boundaries of binaries. It questions available definitions of self, subjecthood and identity and prompts one to imagine ways of comprehending and elucidating the concept of subject. In this sense, the book not only illuminates multiple perspectives on the subject but also compels the reader to formulate their own mode of grappling with this complex idea of the subject. It renders itself as an aid to current and future scholars to re-imagine and re-configure the subject.
This book reveals the economic motivations underpinning colonial, neocolonial and neoliberal eras of global capitalism that are represented in critiques of inequality in postcolonial fiction. Today’s economic inequality, suffered disproportionately by indigenous and minority groups of postcolonial societies in both developed and developing countries, is a direct outcome of the colonial-era imposition of capitalist structures and practices. The longue durée, world-systems approach in this study reveals repeating patterns and trends in the mechanics of capitalism that create and maintain inequality. As well as this, it reveals the social and cultural beliefs and practices that justify and support inequality, yet equally which resist and condemn it. Through analysis of narrative representations of wealth accumulation and ownership, structures of internal inequality between the rich and the poor within cultural communities, and the psychology of capitalism that engenders particular emotions and behaviour, this study brings postcolonial literary economics to the neoliberal debate, arguing for the important contribution of the imaginary to the pressing issue of economic inequality and its solutions.
Originally a concern primarily of social studies and economics, poverty has emerged as a significant thematic focus and analytical tool in literary and cultural studies in the last two decades. The "new poverty studies" are dedicated to analyzing representations of poverty and the poor in literature and the visual arts, in the news media and in social practices. They aim at exploring the frameworks of representation that impact the affective and ethical responses of audiences to disenfranchised groups such as the poor. The contributions to this volume focus on representations of poverty in the Anglophone postcolonial world, exploring, for example, contemporary discourses on poverty in the UK, filmic representations of Nairobi slums or the agency of the poor in literature from India.
Contemporary Indian English Literature focuses on the recent history of Indian literature in English since the publication of Salman Rushdie's novel Midnight's Children (1981), a watershed moment for Indian writing in English in the global literary landscape. The chapters in this volume consider a wide range of poets, novelists, short fiction writers and dramatists who have notably contributed to the proliferation of Indian literature in English from the late 20th century to the present. The volume provides an introduction to current developments in Indian English literature and explains general ideas, as well as the specific features and styles of selected writers from this wide spectrum. It addresses students working in this field at university level, and includes thorough reading lists and study questions to encourage students to read, reflect on and write about Indian English literature critically.
The Short Story after Apartheid offers the first major study of the anglophone short story in South Africa since apartheid’s end. By focusing on the short story this book complicates models of South African literature dominated by the novel and contributes to a much-needed generic and formalist turn in postcolonial studies. Literary texts are sites of productive struggle between formal and extra-formal concerns, and these brief, fragmentary, elliptical, formally innovative stories offer perspectives that reframe or revise important concerns of post-apartheid literature: the aesthetics of engaged writing, the politics of the past, class and race, the legacies of violence, and the struggle over the land. Through an analysis of key texts from the period by Nadine Gordimer, Ivan Vladislavić, Zoë Wicomb, Phaswane Mpe, and Henrietta Rose-Innes, this book assesses the place of the short story in post-apartheid writing and develops a fuller model of how artworks allow and disallow forms of social thought.
Caring for Community: Towards a New Ethics of Responsibility in Contemporary Postcolonial Novels focuses on four highly acclaimed publications in order to argue for a new understanding of community and its ethical framework in recent literary texts. Traditionally, community has been understood to function on the basis of individuals’ readiness to establish relationships of reciprocal responsibility. This book, however, argues that community and non-reciprocity need not be mutually exclusive categories. Examining works by leading contemporary postcolonial authors and reading them against Judith Butler’s post-9/11 concept of global political community, the book explores how concrete acts of responsibility can be carried out in recognition of various others, even and precisely when those others cannot be expected to respond. The literary analyses draw on a rich theoretical framework that includes approaches to care, hospitality and the ethical encounter between self and other. Overall, this book establishes that the novels’ protagonists, by investing in an ethics of responsibility that does not require reciprocity, acquire the agency to envisage new forms of community. By reflecting on the nature and effect of this agency and its representation in contemporary literary texts, the book also considers the role of postcolonial studies in addressing highly topical questions regarding our co-existence with others.