Cities and peripheries : Anglo American conference of historians 2009
Dublin Core
Titre
Cities and peripheries : Anglo American conference of historians 2009
Sujet
, périphéries, histoire urbaine, imaginaire, Calcutta, cartographie, paysage urbain, forme urbaine, Chattopadhyay Swati
Description
Conference description by the organisers : The conference will deal with cities throughout the world, with papers examining the networks of cities and their role in cultural formation, the relations between cities, territories and larger political units, the ideologies and cosmologies of the city and what distinguishes the city or town from other forms of settlement or ways of life.
2010 paper of the same name (a revised version of this lecture) :
This article addresses a methodological problem of urban history faced with the current environmental crisis that urges us to think of humans as ‘geological’ agents. It suggests that the concept of the uncanny that pushes our understanding of spatio-temporality may be a useful device for approaching the methodological need to reconcile what we can and cannot experience/visualize. Viewing the mapping projects around Calcutta in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries through the lens of the uncanny offers us the possibility of such a reconciliation. It enables us to see the landscape as a product of multiple spatio-temporal modes, and loosens the grip of the current urban vocabulary on our imagination of cities.
