Sacralizing the streets

Pedestrian mapping and urban imaginaries in Teju Cole’s Open City and Phaswane Mpe’s Welcome to Our Hillbrow

Dados Bibliográficos

ID9003142
AutoresRebekah Cumpsty (0000-0003-1565-1853, University of York, autor correspondente)
Ano2017
Volume54
Fascículo3
Páginas305-318
Data de publicação2017-04-05
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoThe Journal of Commonwealth Literature (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0021-9894 • E-ISSN: 1741-6442
EditoraSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0021989417700232
OpenAlexW2604992288
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas4
Referências citadas17

This article considers how Teju Cole’s Open City and Phaswane Mpe’s Welcome to Our Hillbrow, two “pedestrian novels”, imagine alternative modes of being and belonging in the postcolonial globalized city by foregrounding the mediatory capacity of indigenous African epistemologies and the sacred in what might otherwise be thought of as a secular environment. The protagonists of these novels embark upon what I term “pedestrian mapping”, as a means of resisting the isolation and marginalization experienced within New York and Johannesburg respectively. Pedestrian mapping enables us to read the incorporation of African epistemologies into the urban environment in tandem with the rituals of walking, thereby exposing the strategies of incorporation and resignification undertaken by Cole’s and Mpe’s protagonists as they establish new physical and ontological “homes”

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Foregrounding · Indigenous · Literature · Media studies · Pedestrian · Sociology · African history and culture studies · Gender Studies · History · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · South African History and Culture