Markus Arnold, Thomas Lacroix & Judith Misrahi-Barak, Reconfiguring the Postcolonial City. Urban Ecotones in the Global South

Volume bilingue (anglais-francais)

Reconfiguring the Postcolonial City: Urban Ecotones in the Global South

éds. M Arnold, T Lacroix, J Misrahi-Barak, Brill, collection “Francopolyphonies”.

Global South cities are magnets of immigration flows. They are vivid crucibles of human diversity, cultural interactions, but also of political tensions and social violence. From Kolkata to Bogota, from Harare to Fort-de-France, from Bamako to Cape Town, this book offers a unique set of studies on cities where multifarious diaspora flows converge. Building on the concept of the ecotone, i.e. a contact zone between populations of different backgrounds, it elicits a multidisciplinary dialogue between social science and humanities scholars, exploring the articulation between the postcolonial and the neoliberal city. Following Ananya Roy’s proposition of a worlding the South (Roy 2014), this book contributes to forging a situated world view rooted in the experience and the imaginary of Southern cities.

With contributions by : Markus Arnold, Nataly Camacho-Mariño, Robin Cohen, Ute Fendler, Justine Feyereisen, Xavier Garnier, Marina Ortrud Hertrampf, Marianne Hillion, Mélanie Joseph-Vilain, Tania Katzschner, Thomas Lacroix, Christine Le Quellec Cottier, Sonja Loots, Emmanuel Mbégane Ndour, Ngetcham, Nicole Ollier, Parwine Patel, Molly Slavin.

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Table des matières

Preface: Ecotones, Creolization, and Cityscapes
Robin Cohen

The Global South City as a Postcolonial Ecotone
Markus Arnold and Thomas Lacroix

Part 1: Between Memory, Imagination and the Neoliberal Present:Revisiting the City

1 Redéfinir l’écotopie : utopie et écotone urbain en Afrique subsaharienne à partir de Rouge impératrice de Léonora Miano
Justine Feyereisen

2 “Potch” in Progress: the evolution of Zuleikha Mayat’s Depictions of Her Hometown in Her Writings
Parwine Patel

3 A Dystopian New City: Raj Kamal Jha’s Critical Irrealism and Infrastructural Violence
Marianne Hillion

4 Un écrivain-clochard à Harare. Lecture écotonale de « Appendix of the Journal » de Dambudzo Marechera
Xavier Garnier

Part 2: Experiencing Otherness, Facing Tensions: Reconfiguring the City

5 Écotones urbains : traces des mentalités hétérogènes dans Le Mandat d’Ousmane Sembène et Madame Bâ d’Érik Orsenna
Ngetcham

6 “Empire Sows the Seeds of Its Own Defeat”: the Reconfigured City in the Global South
Molly Slavin

7 “Genius Deloci”: Reconfiguring Cape Town in Henrietta Rose-Innes’s Green Lion (2015)
Mélanie Joseph-Vilain

8 Disrupting the Language of Nature in Urban Ecology – Problematic Narratives in Cape Town
Tania Katzschner

9 Ruins and Ruderal Ecologies as Ecotonal Spaces: Post-apartheid Perspectives in South African Novels
Sonja Loots

Part 3: Urban Engagements: between Encounter, Exclusion, and Creation

10 La Ville-Pays dans Tram 83 de Fiston Mwanza Mujila : un lieu, des socialités flottantes
Emmanuel Mbégane Ndour

11 Au-delà du non-lieu ? Réceptions de l’écotone urbain dans Tram 83 de Fiston Mwanza Mujila
Christine Le Quellec Cottier

12 L’écotone du marché de Fort-de-France, lieu ou non-lieu pour Patrick Chamoiseau dans Chronique des sept misères ?
Nicole Ollier

13 « Ici on fume les morts » : fête et violences dans des « écotones » urbains à Bogota, Colombie
Nataly Camacho-Mariño

14 Staging Atmosphere: Urban Ecotonal Spaces in African Music Videos
Ute Fendler

15 Paris et ses espaces du Global South dans les romans de Shumona Sinha : entre zones de contact et non-lieux, zones de conflit et hétérotopies
Marina Ortrud Hertrampf

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Markus Arnold is Associate Professor in Francophone studies at the University of Cape Town. His research covers postcolonial theory, Indian ocean & African literatures in French, text-image relations and graphic literature. His monograph is entitled La littérature mauricienne contemporaine (2017) and he is chief-editor of French Studies in Southern Africa.

Thomas Lacroix is CNRS director of research in geography at the Centre for International Research at Sciences Po Paris. His research focuses on immigrant transnationalism and its multilevel relations with the state and cities. He published The Transnational Society. A social theory of cross border linkages (2023).

Judith Misrahi-Barak is Professor in Postcolonial Studies at the English Department, University Paul Valéry Montpellier 3, France. Her prime areas of specialisation are Caribbean and Indo-Caribbean literatures in English. Her monograph is entitled Entre Atlantique et océan Indien: les voix de la Caraïbe anglophone (2021).