Urbanism, mobility and Bombay
Reading the postcolonial city
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2178595 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Bill Ashcroft (0000-0002-2447-2710) |
| Year | 2011 |
| Volume | 47 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 497-509 |
| Publication date | 2011-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Postcolonial Writing (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1744-9855 • E-ISSN: 1744-9863 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/17449855.2011.614774 |
| OpenAlex | W2077788330 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 15 |
| References cited | 3 |
The city has been largely ignored in postcolonial studies because it is hard to fit into the classic discourse of decolonizing rhetoric. But the critical feature of postcolonial cities is that they are the first stage, and the microcosm, of the mobility and cultural intermixing that colonialism sets in motion. No city embodies this function better than Bombay/Mumbai. Bombay is the sine qua non of the postcolonial city because in every respect it encapsulates the processes of postcolonial movement and settlement that come to extend globally. An invention of colonialism, no city has been a greater focus of literary writing than Bombay, which demonstrates the mobility and cosmopolitanism of the postcolonial city, and the fluidity, class disparity and ambivalent sense of home that has come to characterize diasporic populations. This essay examines the extent to which Bombay literature, despite the devastating pressures of state control, corruption and fundamentalist violence, expresses a utopian view of the social, religious and cultural openness of this radical conglomeration of peoples, ethnicities, cultures, classes and religions. Keywords: utopianismmobilitytransnationpostcolonialfundamentalismmultiple modernities Notes 1. The British acquired the Bombay islands from the Portuguese in 1661 as part of the marriage treaty of Charles II of England and Catherine Braganza of Portugal. The wedding took place in 1662 but it was not until 1665 that the islands were reluctantly handed over to the British. 2. I will refer to the novels as "Bombay novels" and to the city as Bombay because for the most part the flowering of the Bombay novel occurred either before, or often in resistance to, the name change to Mumbai. Bombay best captures the identity of the city as a colonial construction. The name "Mumbai" is, paradoxically, the sign of an ethnocentric identity that the postcolonial city earnestly resists, despite the name's obvious decolonizing intent. In many respects "Mumbai" indicates a much deeper change than the mere name
Aesthetics · Ambivalence · Archaeology · Art · Colonialism · Cosmopolitanism · Multiculturalism · Political science · Politics · Rhetoric · Sociology · Urbanism · Anthropology · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · South Asian Cinema and Culture · South Asian Studies and Diaspora · Gender Studies · History · Law
Contemporary Asian Literatures in English
Women at Crossroads
Development as Urban Imaginary
Move to the City
Provincializing Island Poetics
The tales we tell
Namma Chennai
Relocating Bombay’s Poetry Scene
Between Madras and Chennai
City, narratives, and nation
The Things Not in the Picture
The rise (in the fall) of Cochin
Resisting re-orientalism in representation
Delhi
Beautiful Thing
| Unique citing works | 15 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,36 |
| Citation span | 2015 - 2026 (12) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 13 |