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Representing Calcutta : modernity, nationalism, and the colonial uncanny / Swati Chattopadhyay.
Van Pelt Library DS486.C2 C53 2005
By Request
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Chattopadhyay, Swati, 1962-
- Series:
- Asia's great cities
- Asia's transformations
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Kolkata (India)--History.
- Kolkata (India).
- Kolkata (India)--Social conditions.
- City planning--India--Kolkata--History.
- City planning.
- India--Kolkata.
- History.
- Physical Description:
- xvi, 314 pages : illustrations, plans ; 24 cm.
- Place of Publication:
- London ; New York : Routledge, 2005.
- Summary:
- Representing Calcutta: Modernity, nationalism, and the colonial uncanny is a spatial history of the colonial city, and addresses the question of modernity that haunts our perception of Calcutta. The book responds to two inter-related concerns about the city. First is the image of Calcutta as the worst case scenario of a Third World city - the proverbial "city of dreadful nights." Second is the changing nature of the city's public spaces - the demise of certain forms of urban sociality that has been mourned in recent literature as the passing of Bengali modernity. By examining architecture, city plans, paintings, literature, and official reports through the lens of postcolonial, feminist, and spatial theory, the book explores the conditions of colonialism and anticolonial nationalism that produced the city as a modern artifact. At the center of this exploration resides the problem of "representing" the city, representation understood as description and narration, as well as political representation. In doing so Chattopadhyay questions the very idea of colonial cities as creations of the colonizers, and the model of colonial cities as dual cities, split in black and white areas, in favor of a more complicated view of the topography.
- Contents:
- The colonial uncanny
- The limits of "white" town
- Locating mythic selves
- Telling stories
- Death in public.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references (pages [281]-304) and index.
- Local Notes:
- Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Sabin W. Colton, Jr., Memorial Fund.
- ISBN:
- 0415343593
- OCLC:
- 56517490
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