Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis (A Public Culture book) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822342847 ISBN 13: 9780822342847

Publisher: Duke University Press, 2008

Synopsis

Rare Book

About this title

Review:

"Taken together, the essays in Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis offer radically new ways of thinking about this complex city, as well as many hints about emerging or re-emerging cities elsewhere. The essays challenge dominant models of urbanism and demonstrate with force and subtlety how African cities in general and Johannesburg in particular outpace urban theory. Each essay 'de-scribes' the city now in order to envision the city to come. In this volume, we hear--over the droning cliches that still circulate about the African city's ruin and decadence--another note, another cadence."--Ackbar Abbas, author of Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance "An extraordinary exploration of what is so often left out of accounts about cities: what is beneath and what is at the edge. It goes where much of the urban scholarship leaves off or, rather, trails off. The authors' project to write Johannesburg into today's history will serve as a compass to enable researchers and writers to engage other cities that have been left out of history or given a narrow colonial presence." --Saskia Sassen, author of Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages

From the Author:

Sarah Nuttall is Associate Professor of Literature and Cultural Studies at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER), University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. She is the author of Entanglement: Literary and Cultural Reflections on Post-Apartheid (forthcoming) and an editor of several books, including Beautiful/Ugly: African and Diaspora Aesthetics, also published by Duke University Press.

Achille Mbembe is Research Professor in History and Politics at WISER. He is the author of On the Postcolony and La naissance du maquis dans le Sud-Cameroun and a co-editor of Le politique par le bas en Afrique noire.

About this edition

• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0822342847
• ISBN 13: 9780822342847
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 408
• Editor: Nuttall