Insurgent Cityhood
Resistance and Representation in the Global South
Insurgent Cityhood
Resistance and Representation in the Global South
Description
Insurgent Cityhood reimagines the Global South metropolis not as a derivative space on the margins of modernity, but as a dynamic site of resistance, creativity, and knowledge production. Across sixteen essays organized into five thematic clusters, this volume traces a cartography of the resistant city, moving from the lived struggles of Asia and Africa to the performative margins of the Caribbean and Australia, and onward into speculative futures shaped by surveillance, technology, and control.
From the fractured streets of Mumbai and Cairo to the cinematic alleyways of Hong Kong and the neon dystopias of Indian cyberpunk, the contributors uncover how Southern cities are contested, inhabited, and continuously reimagined. Through close engagements with literature, film, cultural practices, and everyday acts of dissent, the essays dismantle Euro-American urban orthodoxies and map alternative histories, identities, and futures forged in the cracks of the postcolonial city.
Far more than sites of colonial residue or neoliberal precarity, cities of the Global South emerge here as living, defiant archives of survival and transformation. Collectively, the chapters reveal the resistant city not merely as a space of opposition, but as a method of thinking and imagining otherwise, where aesthetic, affective, and infrastructural practices converge to articulate new modes of life amid the ruins and promises of modernity. Insurgent Cityhood offers a compelling intervention in urban studies, postcolonial thought, and cultural theory, foregrounding the metropolis of the Global South as a vital arena for rethinking the contemporary world.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Cities in Defiance: Contours of Resistance in the Global South: Subashish Bhattacharjee and Indrajit Mukherjee
Part I: Cluster A: Cities in Asia
Chapter 1: Literary Structural Adjustments: Characters, Form and Genre in A Fine Balance and Five Star Billionaire: Michael Williamson
Chapter 2: 'You Want to Hear the Heartbeat of Karachi': The Female Gaze, Urban Walking and the Poetics of Re-mapping Karachi in Kamila Shamsie's Kartography: Khamsa Qasim
Chapter 3: Chequered Cities and Fragmented Nations: Exploring the Living South Asian Cities in Arundhati Roy's The Ministry of Utmost Happiness and Mohsin Hamid's How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia: Mayurakshi Sen
Chapter 4: ' … for the door leading to the house stood wide open': Spatiality in Anita Desai's Fiction: Arnab Dasgupta
Part II: Cluster B: Cities of Africa
Chapter 5: Spaces of Disparity: Neoliberalism, Postcolonialism and the Shaping of Class and Social Divisions in Contemporary Egyptian Visual Productions: Azza Harras
Chapter 6: 'Tourist Poster Video' as Strategy to Celebrate Cameroonian and Nigerian Cities: Stereotypes, Myths and Branding: Floribert Patrick C. Endong
Chapter 7: Decolonizing the Streets of Douala in Cameroon with André Blaise Essama: Afoumba Dolly
Part III: Cluster C: Cinematic Cities
Chapter 8: De'humanizing' the City: A Study of Contemporary Delhi through Shaunak Sen's All that Breathes: Hiya Chatterjee
Chapter 9: Embracing Fragments: Wong Kar-wai's Cinematic Ode to the Urban Tapestry of Hong Kong: Manisha Bhattacharya
Chapter 10: Interstitial Histories: Boredom and the City in the Post-Partition Cinema of Calcutta: Tirna Chatterjee
Chapter 11: Unwelcome Promise: Prospects of the City in Vaastav, Satya and Yuva: Devapriya Sanyal
Part IV: Cluster D: Cities at the Margins
Chapter 12: The Ground Beneath Their Feet: Urban Aspiration Among Indo-Caribbeans in Shani Mootoo's Novels: Shayeari Dutta
Chapter 13: In Racist Cities: Questioning 'Whiteness' Through Alternative Performative Spaces in Australian Aboriginal Theatre: Sibendu Chakraborty
Chapter 14: Citizens of Decay: The Emotion of Disgust in Subimal Mishra's Short Fiction: Arijeet Mandal
Part V: Cluster E: Non-Cities/Science Fiction/Weird Cities
Chapter 15: Unbelonging in 'New' Delhi: Urban Futures, Surveillance and Citizenship in Sami Ahmad Khan's 'Biryani Bagh' and Samit Basu's The City Inside: Sreejata Paul
Chapter 16: Hyper-Urbanities: Cyberpunk Urbanisms in Indian Speculative Fiction: Arghyadip Dewan
About the Editors
About the Contributors
Index
Product details
| Published | 30 Nov 2026 |
|---|---|
| Format | Hardback |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 412 |
| ISBN | 9789369525225 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Academic India |
| Dimensions | 216 x 135 mm |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing India Pvt. Ltd |
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