The New Asian City: Three-Dimensional Fictions of Space and Urban Form - Softcover

Watson, Jini Kim

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0816675732 ISBN 13: 9780816675739

Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2011

Synopsis

Under Jini Kim Watson’s scrutiny, the Asian Tiger metropolises of Seoul, Taipei, and Singapore reveal a surprising residue of the colonial environment. Drawing on a wide array of literary, filmic, and political works, and juxtaposing close readings of the built environment, Watson demonstrates how processes of migration and construction in the hypergrowth urbanscapes of the Pacific Rim crystallize the psychic and political dramas of their colonized past and globalized present.

Examining how newly constructed spaces—including expressways, high-rises, factory zones, department stores, and government buildings—become figured within fictional and political texts uncovers how massive transformations of citizenries and cities were rationalized, perceived, and fictionalized. Watson shows how literature, film, and poetry have described and challenged contemporary Asian metropolises, especially around the formation of gendered and laboring subjects in these new spaces. She suggests that by embracing the postwar growth-at-any-cost imperative, they have buttressed the nationalist enterprise along neocolonial lines.

The New Asian City provides an innovative approach to how we might better understand the gleaming metropolises of the Pacific Rim. In doing so, it demonstrates how reading cultural production in conjunction with built environments can enrich our knowledge of the lived consequences of rapid economic and urban development.

About this title

About the Author

Jini Kim Watson is assistant professor of English and comparative literature at New York University.

Edition details

• Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0816675732
• ISBN 13: 9780816675739
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 312