Visceral cosmopolitanism : gender, culture and the normalisation of difference / Mica Nava.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Nava, Mica.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

City and town life--England.

City and town life.

Cosmopolitanism--England.

Cosmopolitanism.

England.

Physical Description:

xii, 209 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Berg, 2007.

Summary:

Cultural theorist Mica Nava makes an original and significant contribution to the study of cosmopolitanism by exploring everyday English urban cosmopolitanism and foregrounding the gendered, imaginative and empathetic aspects of positive engagement with cultural and racial difference.

By looking at a wide range of texts, events and biographical narratives, she traces cosmopolitanism from its marginal status at the beginning of the twentieth century to its relative normalisation today. Case studies include the promotion of cosmopolitanism by Selfridges before the first world war; relationships between white English women and 'other' men - Jews and black Gls - during the 1930s and 1940s; literary, cinematic and social science representations of migrants in postcolonial Britain; and Diana and Dodi's interracial romance in the 1990s. In the final chapter, the author draws on her own complex family history to illustrate the contemporary cosmopolitan London experience.

Scholars have tended to ignore the oppositional cultures of antiracism and social inclusivity. This groundbreaking study redresses this imbalance and offers a sophisticated account of the uneven history of vernacular cosmopolitanism.

Contents:

Part I Introduction

1 Cosmopolitanism, Everyday Culture and Structures of Feeling: The Intellectual Framework of the Book 3

Part II Cosmopolitanism and Commercial Culture, 1910s-1920s

2 The Allure of Difference: Selfridges, the Russian Ballet and the Tango 19

3 'The Big Shop Controversy': Ideological Communities and the Chesterton-Selfridge Dispute 41

Part III Difference and Desire in the 1930s-1940s

4 The Unconscious and Others: Inclusivity, Jews and the Eroticisation of Difference 63

5 White Women and Black Men: The Negro as Signifier of Modernity in Wartime Britain 75

Part IV Cosmopolitanism in Postcolonial Britain

6 Thinking Internationally, Thinking Sexually: Race in Postwar Fiction, Film and Social Science 97

7 Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed: Romance, Race and the Reconfiguration of the Nation 121

Part V Conclusion: Actually Existing Cosmopolitanism

8 A Love Song to Our Mongrel Selves: Cosmopolitan Habitus and the Ordinariness of Difference 133.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 183-200) and index.

ISBN:

1845202422

9781845202422

1845202430

9781845202439

OCLC:

137244662

Online:

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