Cityscapes of Dissent: Postcolonial Realities and Futuristic Visions in Indian Fiction

Book Review| June 01 2020 Review: Future Cities: Architecture and the Imagination, by Paul Dobraszczyk Paul Dobraszczyk Future Cities: Architecture and the Imagination London: Reaktion Books, 2019, 271 pp., 70 b/w illus. $25 (cloth), ISBN 9781789140644 Adnan Morshed Adnan Morshed Catholic University of America Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (2020) 79 (2): 232–233. https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2020.79.2.232 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Adnan Morshed; Review: Future Cities: Architecture and the Imagination, by Paul Dobraszczyk. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 1 June 2020; 79 (2): 232–233. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2020.79.2.232 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentJournal of the Society of Architectural Historians Search In Future Cities: Architecture and the Imagination, Paul Dobraszczyk argues that there is a lesson to be learned from architectural and urban imaginations—from the nineteenth century to the present—that could be repurposed to solve some of the pressing problems of our cities in the age of the Anthropocene. As we increasingly become aware of the “destructive impact of human activity on the planet” (12), imaginations could be instrumentalized to change current urban practices—or, rather, malpractices. Dobraszczyk asserts that this strategic use of imagination should be possible because the categories of “imaginary” and “real” are much more intertwined than we tend to think. He states: “The central aim of the book is to ground these imaginary cities in architectural practice, demonstrating just how many connections can be made between the two” (8). Focusing on three thematic types of imagined cities—“unmoored cities (submerged, floating and flying), vertical cities (skyscrapers and undergrounds)... You do not currently have access to this content.

This paper explores the intersection of gender and identity in contemporary Indian literature. It draws on works that examine feminist themes, postmodernism, and intertextuality. The paper emphasizes the significant contributions made by Indian women writers to the global literary canon, while also engaging with various feminist perspectives, such as intersectionality and cultural feminism. The analysis addresses methodological challenges in feminist criticism and the ethical considerations inherent in such critiques, shedding light on how Indian English novels have responded to and transformed patriarchal norms. Using contemporary feminist thought for analysis, the discussion underscores the evolving nature of the feminist psyche in Indian fiction, positioning it within broader discourses of globalization and power dynamics. Key works referenced in this analysis include Sunita Banerjee’s "Gender and Identity in Contemporary Indian English Novels," Jaspreet Kaur’s "Women and Identity in Indian Fiction," and Shashi Deshpande’s "Contemporary Feminist Novels in India." These texts, among others, provide the foundation for the exploration of how Indian literature navigates gender, power, and identity in a postmodern and feminist context.

For a long time now, Indian literature has meant Indian English literature to the reading public, especially in the West. This came about after Rushdie burst into the international literary scene with Midnight’s Children, a novel about India that changed the very course of Indian English fiction. Even when the translation industry in India is considered to have boomed in the 1990s, translated literature still remained largely popular only with academics and with a small discerning readership. But this seems to have changed in the new millennium. This is evident from more and more publishing houses getting involved in bringing out translations, constitution of new literary prizes solely aimed at translated literature, translated literature from India finding a place in the long lists and short lists of international awards and featuring in almost every list of Indian newspapers and magazines that bring out year-end best lists. Is translation in India getting its due share of glory now? What changed from the 1990s to the second decade of the 2000s that the tables almost seem to have turned regarding Indian English fiction and Indian fiction in English translation? The paper looks at this resurgence of translations in comparison with Indian English fiction and attempts to explore the ways these changes have come about. The paper argues that if Indian English novels have become more local, bhasha novels have become more global. The paper will focus on the recent translations from Malayalam literature to substantiate its arguments and seeks to comment on the politics of language, literature, and representation in contemporary India.

A Journey of Indian English Novels

Introduction: Beyond the Anglophone—Comparative South Asian Literatures

The portrayal of queer lives in Indian literature has predominantly been examined in urban contexts, whereas the intersection of tribal identity and queer sexuality has been minimal. R. Raj Rao, the revolutionary writer of Indian queer literature, amplifies these marginalized voices to challenge existing paradigms and enlarge the concern of queer debate in Indian fiction. This article seeks to investigate the multiple representations of tribal queer protagonists in Rao's fiction, highlighting the dual marginalization of these characters due to their sexuality and indigeneity. Through critical analysis of Rao's fiction in “The Boyfriend”, this study thoroughly states the awareness of Rao's protagonists as they resist the dual boundaries of identity, belonging and resistance, amid social and cultural constraints. This paper also employs queer theory and subaltern studies as a method of analysis, yielding a close examination of the narrative strategies, linguistic possibilities, and thematic frameworks that Rao uses to represent tribal queer lives. Moreover, Rao is an unflinching the representation of marginalised desires resisting normative perceptions of sexuality and identity and also demonstrates a landmark for future exploration of the intersection between queer and tribal identities.

Emergence of Young Adult Fiction in Indian English

Urban sustainability transitions are journeys of transformative socio-technical change to set course for an envisioned future city. These journeys start out in the minds of change agents as vague conceptual images inspired by far-flung ideals, which are then further substantiated and articulated as ‘urban imaginaries’ – shared understandings of what constitutes a desirable future city. The conceptual contribution of this paper lies in demonstrating the power of the urban imaginaries notion to studying the process of envisioning in the context of sustainability transitions. By following a number of prolific Thai cycling campaigners through the streets of several cities in Thailand – focusing on the urban imaginaries they articulate – this paper shows how urban sustainability transitions are envisioned from the bike saddle, how these imaginaries are mobilised to empower cycling and how a seemingly disparate set of urban development pathways converge around technological artefacts and material infrastructure.

Shashi Deshpande’s literary oeuvre offers a profound exploration of the complex emotional and psychological landscapes of Indian women, making her a significant voice in contemporary Indian English literature. This study delves into Deshpande’s portrayal of women’s inner worlds, their familial roles, and their battles with societal expectations, highlighting her mastery of emotional realism. Through close examination of novels such as Roots and Shadows, The Dark Holds No Terrors, That Long Silence, and The Binding Vine, this paper uncovers how Deshpande intricately weaves the personal struggles, fears, and aspirations of her female protagonists with larger social issues like patriarchal constraints and domestic violence. Her work serves as a platform for amplifying marginalized women’s voices, offering a nuanced depiction of their journey toward self-identity and agency. By analyzing her narrative strategies and thematic concerns, this paper contributes to the discourse on gender dynamics in Indian literature and underscores Deshpande’s role in fostering social awareness through her storytelling.

Purpose– The purpose of this technical viewpoint is to provide a commentary of how we went about using logistics prototyping as a method to engage citizens, science fiction (SF) writers and small- to medium- sized enterprises (SME’s). Six urban logistic prototypes built on the themes of future cities, community resilience and urban supply chain management (SCM) are summarized, together with details of the data collection procedure and the methodological challenges encountered. Our investigation aimed to explore the potential of logistics prototyping to develop “user-driven” and “SME” approaches to future city design and urban supply chain decision-making.Design/methodology/approach– This Boston field experiment was a case study investigation conducted between May and August 2013. Qualitative data was collected using a “mixed-method” approach combining together focus groups (MIT faculty), scenarios, prototyping workshops, interviews and document analysis. These story-creators could use the prototype method as a way of testing their hypotheses, theories and constrained speculations with regard to specified future city and urban supply chain scenarios.Findings– This viewpoint suggests that the prototyping method allows for unique individual perspectives on future city planning and urban supply chain design. This work also attempts to demonstrate that prototyping can create sufficiently cogent environments for future city and urban SCM theories to be both detected and analysed therein. Although this is an experimental field of the SCM theory building, more conventional theories could also be “tested” in the same manner.Research limitations/implications– By embedding logistics prototyping within a mixed method approach, we might be criticized as constraining its capability to map out the future – that its potential to be flexible and imaginative are held back by the equal weighting given to the more conventional component. In basing our case study within one city then this might be seen as limiting the complexity of the empirical context – however, the situation within different cities is inherently complex. Case studies also attract criticism on the grounds of not being representative; in this situation, they might be criticized as imperfect indicators of what transpires in other situations. However, this technical viewpoint suggests that in spite of its limitations, prototyping facilitates an imaginative and creative approach to theory generation and concept building.Practical implications– The methodology allows everyday citizens and SME’s to develop user-driven foresight and planning scenarios with city strategists’ and urban logistic designers. It facilitates much broader stakeholder involvement in city and urban supply chain policymaking, than current “quantitative” approaches.Social implications– Logistics fiction prototyping provides a democratic approach to future city planning and urban supply chain design. It involves collectively imagining socio-technical futures and second-order sociological effects through the writing of SF narratives or building “design fictions”.Originality/value– Decision-making in future cities and urban SCM is often a notable challenge, balancing the varying needs and claims of multiple stakeholders, while negotiating an acceptable trade-off between their competing claims. Engagement with stakeholders and active encouragement of stakeholder participation in the supply chain aspects of future cities is increasingly a feature of twenty-first century social decision-making. This viewpoint suggests that the prototyping method allows for unique individual perspectives on future city planning and urban supply chain design. This work also attempts to demonstrate that prototyping can create sufficiently cogent environments for future city and the urban SCM theories to be both detected and analysed therein. Although this is an experimental field of SCM theory building, more conventional theories could also be “tested” in the same manner.

Mashhad, Iran's second-largest city and a major religious centre, has grown rapidly due to population increase, migration, and tourism. This study presents a comprehensive city profile, examining Mashhad's historical development, urban sprawl, planning policies, and the rise of informal settlements. Urban growth often outpaces planning capacity, leading to fragmented development, inefficient land use, and socio-spatial inequalities. Informal settlements now house a significant portion of the population due to economic pressures, migration, and limited access to affordable housing. Despite successive master plans aiming to manage urban growth and promote compact development, planning responses remain fragmented and largely reactive. This study highlights the challenges of managing urban growth and informal settlements in Mashhad and underscores the need for integrated, proactive planning strategies encompassing housing, infrastructure, and public participation. By examining rapid urbanization under religious, social, and economic pressures, it provides lessons for urban development and planning in other emerging cities worldwide.

Labor in favelas was not acknowledged by architects and planners because of the interpretation of the definition of the informal settlement and the slum. Also, by architectural practice and parochial theories, which affect the production of planners and architects. The definition of slums as spaces lacking sanitation and infrastructural components is deeply rooted in both theoretical and institutional definitions of the informal settlement. Nevertheless, the spaces of slums and informal settlements are much more complex and include social-economic aspects of everyday life of its inhabitants. Interpretative tools and intellectual frames are needed to open new perspectives and epistemologies in the field of architecture that are capable to address the needs of únderpriviledged people. This is the ethos of the methodology designed to study informal settlements in the present study. The finding that work is a fundamental element shaping space dynamics of informal settlement is based on an ethnographic research. To investigate how the social actions of the inhabitants shape them, methodological tools of anthropology (such as ethnography, interviews, oral history) rooted in De Certeau (and participatory research) were combined to the methodology of the Pattern Language (and with methodological tools of architecture such as drawing) to highlight the importance of social practices as shapers of space in in contexts in which the socio-spatial dynamics are not familiar to architects and planners, such as informal settlements. This methodology is underpinned by architectural imagination and intellectual reflection. It is the architectural imagination that allow architects and planners to create instruments to understand and represent space and new interpretative frames to study space. As for example, the perspective, which was invented when architects such as Bruneleschi experimented to draw over a mirror in a Plaza, in order to represent proportion, focal points and drain lines in the Renaissance Period.

Labor in favelas was not acknowledged by architects and planners because of the interpretation of the definition of the informal settlement and the slum. Also, by architectural practice and parochial theories, which affect the production of planners and architects. The definition of slums as spaces lacking sanitation and infrastructural components is deeply rooted in both theoretical and institutional definitions of the informal settlement. Nevertheless, the spaces of slums and informal settlements are much more complex and include social-economic aspects of everyday life of its inhabitants. Interpretative tools and intellectual frames are needed to open new perspectives and epistemologies in the field of architecture that are capable to address the needs of únderpriviledged people. This is the ethos of the methodology designed to study informal settlements in the present study. The finding that work is a fundamental element shaping space dynamics of informal settlement is based on an ethnographic research. To investigate how the social actions of the inhabitants shape them, methodological tools of anthropology (such as ethnography, interviews, oral history) rooted in De Certeau (and participatory research) were combined to the methodology of the Pattern Language (and with methodological tools of architecture such as drawing) to highlight the importance of social practices as shapers of space in in contexts in which the socio-spatial dynamics are not familiar to architects and planners, such as informal settlements. This methodology is underpinned by architectural imagination and intellectual reflection. It is the architectural imagination that allow architects and planners to create instruments to understand and represent space and new interpretative frames to study space. As for example, the perspective, which was invented when architects such as Bruneleschi experimented to draw over a mirror in a Plaza, in order to represent proportion, focal points and drain lines in the Renaissance Period.

Reviewed by: Die Lust zu gehen. Weibliche Flanerie in Literatur und Film ed. by Georgiana Banita, Judith Ellenbürger, and Jörn Glas Beth Ann Muellner Die Lust zu gehen. Weibliche Flanerie in Literatur und Film. Edited by Georgiana Banita, Judith Ellenbürger, and Jörn Glas. Paderborn: Fink, 2017. Pp. 223. Paper €36.90. ISBN 978-3770561919. Building on thirty years of Anglo-American scholarship on the Flaneuse, the female strolling poet of urban spaces, the ten essays collected by Georgiana Banita, Judith Ellenbürger, and Jörn Glas in Die Lust zu gehen. Weibliche Flanerie in Literatur und Film offer insights from a West German scholarly perspective. The contributors in literature and media studies seek to reinforce female Flanerie within gender studies as a theoretical apparatus in its own right, against the seemingly perpetual need for legitimization against the (male) Flaneur of Charles Baudelaire, Walter Benjamin, and Franz Hessel. The frequent mention of these authors' names in the essays is evidence enough of how difficult that task can be. In their brief introduction, the editors place special emphasis on the intermedial and comparative perspectives of film and literature, citing classic examples such as Irmgard Keun's Das kunstseidene Mädchen (1932) and Walter Ruttmann's Berlin—Die Symphonie der Großstadt (1927), both explored in later essays, in comparison to newer examples of Flanerie in films that feature Audrey Hepburn and directed by Agnès Vardas, Joel Schumacher, and Béla Tarr. A welcome shift in the study of the Flaneuse as racial/ethnic other appears in essays that explore authors with east-west migration experience. The essays cover mainly German-language fiction and films that span from the 1930s to roughly 2010, with some exceptions. In the first chapter, Maren Lickhardt offers a comparison of female Flaneurs in texts by Irmgard Keun and Klaus Mann. [End Page 166] The difference in experience hinges on female protagonists' skills of perception, some of which miss the mark, with Mann's female protagonist ultimately more limited than Keun's. Banita lends insight into a relatively unexplored domain that links female Flanerie to the consumption of alcohol, exploring Jean Rhys's Good Morning, Midnight (1939) via Wayne Koestenbaum's Hotel Theory (2007) and Avital Ronell's Crack Wars: Literature, Addiction, Mania (2004). Rita Morrien and Caroline Rosenthal review a rekindled interest in the Flaneuse via recent theories of space and place. Morrien views texts by Herta Müller and Angela Krauß as falsely placed within the tradition of Benjamin, and turns instead to the spatial theories of Martina Löw and Michel de Certeau, as well as the nomadic theory of Rosi Braidotti. In her solid, but abbreviated overview of Flanerie's history, Rosenthal continues Morrien's expansion of the genre in her contemplation of the immigrant Flaneuse in 1990s fiction by Siri Hustvedt and Tessa McWatts. Leonhard Fuest's complex discussion of Yoko Tawada's posthuman Flaneur-protagonists considers the mouse/rat, sparrow, and dog within what he calls the "monströse Kulturtechnik" (101) of twenty-first century Flanerie. Andrea Bartl explores the possibility of the amok-running-Flaneur with analogies to the black Flaneur in Joel Schumacher's film Falling Down (1993), with only brief mention of female amok-runners. The possibility of the black Flaneuse remains entirely absent, although Nigerian-German director Sheri Hagen's 2012 film Auf dem zweiten Blick could have provided a rich opportunity for comparison in this context. Judith Ellenbürger discusses the discourses of "Blickökonomie, Prostitution, Konsum, Shopping oder auch die Praktikabilität von Schuhwerk und Kleidung" (135) as fleeting moments of empowerment that ultimately leave Hepburn as Flaneuse locked in a state of nomadic oscillation. In Felix Lenz's thorough discussion of Agnès Varda's film Cléo de 5 à 7 (1962), Cléo wandering as a terminal cancer patient serves as metaphor for both the classic fear of death and for the modern struggle with patriarchal structures. Lenz's analysis is fresh in its comparisons to the fairytale narrative of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which also links his chapter to Bartl's analysis of Falling Down. Natalie Lettenwich draws on the word Beute (prizes, spoils, loot) from...

The purpose of this article was to find out social challenges learners residing in informal settlements in Katima Mulilo Town face. Informal settlements crop up as people move from rural settings to urban areas as they seek better facilities, a process known as urbanisation. However, not all who migrate into urban areas end up getting the required facilities. This result in some finding residence in informal settlements where conditions are deplorable and as a result brings some social challenges to learning. This article’s objective is to explore the social challenges learners residing in informal settlements face in learning. The article also seeks possible ways to deal with the social challenges in order to make learning possible. To come up with response to the questions, the study adopted a qualitative research approach. Instruments used to generate data were observation and interviews. To support the data generated from the participants, the learners, the social capital theory and urban theories were used. Some of the social challenges found to impede learning include poverty, flooding, expensive water and electricity bills, limited sewage disposal system, unfair relocations, poor sanitation, unemployment and high crime rate. Solutions were also suggested on how to overcome these challenges.