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Fictions of the postcolonial city: Reading Bombay-Mumbai as the 'Locus Classicus' of modernity in India

Ghose, Ipshita (2011) Fictions of the postcolonial city: Reading Bombay-Mumbai as the 'Locus Classicus' of modernity in India. Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) thesis, University of Kent. (doi:10.22024/UniKent/01.02.94364) (KAR id:94364)

Abstract

Fictions of the Postcolonial City studies representations of the city of Bombay-Mumbai as a locus of modernity in urban novels, written by primarily Indian authors writing in English. This thesis documents the prolific literary output that has emerged from the postcolonial city in the aftermath of the Emergency in India, and focuses specifically on the forceful nature of the urban sphere which offers alternative discourses of modernity to the prevalent nationalist version. The spectral presence of a colonial past which shadows many aspects of the city’s thriving present is both acknowledged and disturbed in the many works of fiction and theoretical perspectives which I examine. The prominence of Bombay-Mumbai as a hub of commerciality, culture and cosmopolitanism, its eclectic and interpolative blend of traditions and modern practices, its infinitely capacious nature which accommodates an ever-increasing influx of migrants, the provincial politics which has tainted the city’s secular repute and fuelled inter-community conflicts, the gendered spaces of the city, and the visual codes which circumscribe the urban sphere, are extensively analyzed in the course of this thesis. I argue that the contemporary city of Bombay-Mumbai has achieved literary prominence in its postcolonial and global stagings of modernity and has superseded both the Indian nation and other major metropolitan centres to form the principal landscape against which this modernity is played out. The writers discussed in this study are Salman Rushdie, Rohinton Mistry, Anita Desai, Vikram Chandra, Suketu Mehta, Leslie Forbes, Shashi Deshpande, and Thrity Umrigar.

Item Type: Thesis (Doctor of Philosophy (PhD))
DOI/Identification number: 10.22024/UniKent/01.02.94364
Additional information: This thesis has been digitised by EThOS, the British Library digitisation service, for purposes of preservation and dissemination. It was uploaded to KAR on 25 April 2022 in order to hold its content and record within University of Kent systems. It is available Open Access using a Creative Commons Attribution, Non-commercial, No Derivatives (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) licence so that the thesis and its author, can benefit from opportunities for increased readership and citation. This was done in line with University of Kent policies (https://www.kent.ac.uk/is/strategy/docs/Kent%20Open%20Access%20policy.pdf). If you feel that your rights are compromised by open access to this thesis, or if you would like more information about its availability, please contact us at ResearchSupport@kent.ac.uk and we will seriously consider your claim under the terms of our Take-Down Policy (https://www.kent.ac.uk/is/regulations/library/kar-take-down-policy.html).
Uncontrolled keywords: Post-colonialism; modernity
Subjects: P Language and Literature > PR English literature
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Arts and Humanities > School of English
SWORD Depositor: SWORD Copy
Depositing User: SWORD Copy
Date Deposited: 17 Feb 2023 15:20 UTC
Last Modified: 17 Feb 2023 15:20 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/94364 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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