Sacralizing the streets
Pedestrian mapping and urban imaginaries in Teju Cole’s Open City and Phaswane Mpe’s Welcome to Our Hillbrow
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9003142 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Rebekah Cumpsty (0000-0003-1565-1853, University of York, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 54 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 305-318 |
| Publication date | 2017-04-05 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Journal of Commonwealth Literature (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-9894 • E-ISSN: 1741-6442 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0021989417700232 |
| OpenAlex | W2604992288 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 17 |
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
African religions & philosophy
The Practice of Everyday Life
Reevaluating the Postcolonial City
Locating Identity in Phaswane Mpe's Welcome To Our Hillbrow
The Adaptative Nature of Neoliberalism at the Local Scale
Cities in Globalization
On the Postcolony
City forms and writing the 'now' in South Africa
The Bare Facts of Ritual
The Flâneur and the Aesthetic
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2022 - 2025 (4) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |