Urban Subjectivities in Wendy Dickson’s A Hint of Jacaranda Sindhu J
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.67431/9fgnp858Keywords:
urban subjectivity, critical urban nostalgia, locality history, gendered identity-spacesAbstract
The paper engages with a specific aspect of the complex urban spaces of Bengaluru through an examination of a select urban narrative by Wendy Dickson, published in 2009. This aspect has to do with the commonly-held notion upheld in urban studies scholarship that, like many fast-growing cities of the Global South, Bengaluru’s urban present and future have had, and continue to have, little engagement with its historical urban pasts. Through an analysis of Wendy M. Dickson’s A Hint of Jacaranda: Recollections of Beauty in the Ordinary, my paper attempts to establish that this work offers an important counter-narrative of urban space which challenges the above perspective. The analysis will draw from frames of urban theory which focus on critical urban nostalgia and locality history, underscoring the importance of developing consciously gendered women-centric perspectives as well as the role of urban memory in shaping contemporary urban subjectivities in relation to Bengaluru’s urban spaces
References
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