Cecile Sandten

Intermedial fictions of the “new” metropolis: Calcutta, Delhi and Cairo in the graphic novels of Sarnath Banerjee and G. Willow Wilson 1

The notion of “new” metropolises alludes to the multilayered ways of life inside and outside, or even “downside”, of postcolonial cityscapes. This holds true, for example, for Calcutta, Delhi or Cairo. Unlike the normative conception of the western metropolis, three graphic novels, Sarnath Banerjee’s Corridor (2004) and The Barn Owl’s Wondrous Capers (2007) and G. Willow Wilson’s and M.K. Perker’s Cairo (2007), produce “new” metropolises which disclose the postcolonial city’s own subversive nature of underworlds morphing into overworlds, where tradition, modernity (and postmodernity) collide in the most unrelenting and dynamic fashion. The texts under discussion exemplify the nature and scope of the “new” metropolis by virtue of their enabling synthesis between the literary and imaginary. By focusing on the strategies of palimpsest-like layering in the three novels, this essay aims to show that postcolonial cities are essentially “new” metropolises that do not lend themselves to an easy explanation or conceptual ornamentation. Instead, they bear features of dynamism and multiplex layering that the literature on urban studies and postcolonial metropolises in general, has so far failed to address.

Global Realignments and the Canadian Nation in the Third Millennium

Herwig Friedl, the arguments of James and Nishida are similar: “Like James, Nishida believes that it is pure experience which allows time, space, and beings to emerge; like James, Nishida does not posit a world disposed spatially and temporally in an a priori fashion” (323). Moreover, in his view as well the moment is the only creative form of time. In her conclusion, Capelle sums up many analogies and similarities between the American and the East Asian thinkers, yet also points to decisive differences: “Dogen and Nishida – in opposition to Emerson, Thoreau, James, and Dewey – do not acknowledge the reality of continuity and transition. Instead, in accordance with the Buddhist doctrine of ‘momentariness’ ..., they believe in the simultaneous birth and death of time in each singular, concrete moment or temporal particularity of ‘existence-time’ ...” (360–61). This statement is important as we have to keep the traditions apart; ideas like Nishida’s “nothingness” are hard to translate into Western categories, and are radically different, if I am correct, from, for example, existentialist notions of nothingness. Capelle focuses on cross-cultural relations exclusively on the level of texts. Due to her philosophical approach, she does not consider contexts. The social and political structures in which early Chinese ideas about time emerged are not mentioned, nor are the Christian foundations of modern Western linear time discussed. A further critical point is that the interpretations at times can be somewhat lengthy and could have been made more concise, as several arguments are repeated in the readings of different texts. What I am missing, however, is a more than passing reference to contemporary theories in the sciences, such as complexity, network, systems, and chaos theory in which many similar ideas can be found. Only in the last sentence of the introduction and the last one of the book does the author point to possible links between the ideas propounded in her study and contemporary science and philosophy. It might have been a good idea to at least allude to some of the convergences between complexity, pragmatism, and eastern notions of time. Birgit Capelle’s study is an important and timely contribution to the study of time. Its cross-cultural comparative approach is innovative. The detailed readings are often lucid and always precise. All in all, this book is a much needed contribution to American Studies, one of the few philosophical investigations which are being produced in the field these days. If you want to speak about theories of time, about Transcendentalism or Pragmatism, and if you, moreover, truly want to go global intellectually, this book is an excellent start.

Introduction: Tracing the urban imaginary in the postcolonial metropolis and the “new” metropolis

This issue is special in the sense that it simultaneously explores the topicality, topography, topology and typography underlying the wide range of the “urban imaginary”. This is to say, the aesthetic investments characterizing the textures of literary representations of the postcolonial metropolis and/or what we call the “new” metropolis. Although the very concept of the metropolis “has been used in contexts of colonial and imperial and postcolonial criticism” (Farías and Stemmler 12), recent scholarship dealing with urban literature has mainly focused on London as the former colonial centre (Baker 1996; Ball 2004; Cuevas 2008; Korte and Sternberg 2003; Onega 2002; Phillips 2004). Moreover, these critics see the “new” metropolis in opposition to the “old” – that is, European or imperial capitals of ex-colonial countries. In so doing they stress negative aspects such as overpopulation, unequal access to economic and material resources, or slumification. Following King, who cogently observed that the “new” metropolises, as discursive environments in their own right, have been “woefully neglected” (320) in the field of postcolonial studies, we attempt to both complement and complete these previous debates. As the topic has only just begun to receive nuanced critical attention (Nnodim 321–32; Sandten 125–44), this issue is dedicated to fresh approaches to cultural representations of what – since the 1960s with respect to the field of Urban Studies – has been variously termed “global city”, “world city”, “megacity”, “megalopolis”, “cosmopolis”, “galactic metropolis”, “boomburb” or “metroplex”. Our selection of articles thus aims to promote a dialogue between the politics and poetics of urban space – both real and imagined – and recent redirections of ideas and ideologies pertaining to postcolonial discourse in as well as through literature. This dialogue is shaped by what Rüdiger Kunow, among others, referred to as the “spatial turn” (186), and, more recently, Ignacio Farías and Susanne Stemmler termed the “metropolitan turn” (2). As a concept, the “metropolis” dates back to antiquity and was rediscovered during the 18th and 19th centuries. However, based on the assumption that “the concept metropolis has become of central importance and notoriety within the urban discourses” (Farías and Stemmler 2; emphasis in original), we are less interested in applying this merely abstract “concept or category of practice” (2) to a wide range of textual representations.

Re-Inventing the Postcolonial (in the) Metropolis

The volume Re-Inventing the Postcolonial (in the) Metropolis offers a wide-ranging collection of interdisciplinary essays by international scholars that address the postcolonial urban imaginary across five continents.

Notes on Contributors and Editors

The volume Re-Inventing the Postcolonial (in the) Metropolis offers a wide-ranging collection of interdisciplinary essays by international scholars that address the postcolonial urban imaginary across five continents.

‘Home was always far away’: intertextual and intermedial poetic appropriations of double consciousness in Sujata Bhatt's Pure Lizard

In her poems, Indian-born, American-educated and German-based poet Sujata Bhatt examines the relationships between literature, diaspora and memory. Specifically, she employs a variety of personae (lyrical voices) that bridge continents, languages and identities. In her most recent poetry collection, Pure Lizard [Bhatt, S. 2008. Pure Lizard. Manchester: Carcantet], Bhatt uses intertextual and intermedial poetic strategies to explore and convey the heterogeneity of the Indian diasporic experience. Echoing Stuart Halls notion of diaspora, I argue that Bhatts recent poetry collection explores a poetics of diasporic transformation by renegotiating and appropriating W.E.B. Du Boiss term, ‘double consciousness’, as she draws on the idea of the individual who is characterized by several, albeit warring, identities. In this light, I will analyse the ways in which Bhatts writings as well as her larger poetic project both overcome and re-enact the unsettling predicament of her own as well as her personaes displaced cultural identities.

‘Metroglorification and diffuse urbanism’: Literarische repräsentationen des postkolonialen im palimpsestraum der ‘neuen’ metropolen

Abstract: The notion of ‘new’ metropolises alludes to the multilayered ways of life inside as well as outside, or even ‘downside’ of the cityscapes in the postcolonial societies. This holds true to what can be identified ‘new’ metropolises such as Bombay, Delhi or Lagos. Unlike the normative conception of the metropolis in the West, seen through the concepts of “metroglorification” and “diffuse urbanism”, these ‘new’ metropolises disclose the postcolonial city’s own subversive nature of underworlds morphing into overworlds, where tradition, modernity (and postmodernity) collide in the most unrelenting and dynamic fashion. The texts selected for analysis in this essay include Suketu Mehta’s Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found (2004), Kushwant Sing’s Delhi (1990) and Chris Abani’s GraceLand (2005). While elaborating on the themes of palimpsest-like layering in these texts, this essay aims to show, via the eyes of postcolonial flâneurs, that postcolonial cities are essentially ‘new’ metropolises that do not lend themselves to an easy explanation or conceptual ornamentation. Instead, they bear features of dynamism and multiplex layering that is most categorically absent in the literature on urban studies and the postcolonial metropolises in general.

A German Prospero and an Indian Ariel: Balancing Power

The artistic project of the Annette Leday Dance Company focuses on the development of rare traditional performance techniques in contemporary dance creations. The French choreographer Annette Leday was trained in Western dance techniques and studied Kathakali dance-theatre in Kerala, South India. She performed regularly with both Indian and Western troupes in India and Europe. Over the last twenty years, she has created an original process of exchange between Indian and Western artists that use a new vocabulary which has emerged from the contact between the two different dance traditions. Productions by the Annette Leday Dance Company include Kathakali-King Lear (1989), La Sensitive (1992), Trans-Malabar (1995) and Cinderella Otherwise (1997). The international production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest in Bremen 2000 brought together the German actors of the bremer shakespeare company and the Indian dancers of the Annette Leday Dance Company. The director, Pit Holzwarth, has been a playwright and director of the bremer shakespeare company since 1987 and has staged several Shakespeare plays, including The Merry Wives of Windsor (1991), Titus Andronicus (1992), As You Like It (1993), Pericles Prince of Tyre and Cymbeline (1995) and Hamlet (1998). The first part of the international Tempest-production took place in India in the summer of 1999. After five months residence and work in Bremen, the opening was held on 17 May 2000.