The Migrant and the City: Literary Representations of Public, Private, and Imagined Migrant Experience in London

In: Dialectics of Space and Place across Virtual and Corporeal Topographies
Author:
Rebecca D’Arcy
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Representations of London life abound in contemporary British Black and Asian migrant fiction. Some are bleak, some conjure up images of an urban idyll, while others are frenetic and disturbed. Yet all of these fictional representations of London endeavour to make the city legible to us, to make it possible for us to find a way to read the city and understand something of its structure, protagonists, and plot. Depending on individual perspective, London can assume very different characters or personalities. This is an idea that ties in well with central concepts taken from those working in the area of Psychogeography. As Will Self has observed, Psychogeography is ‘concerned with the personality of place itself’. Psychogeographical ideas, therefore, may prove relevant to this exploration of literary representations of the relationship between London and the migrant. To what extent do our physical surroundings influence our emotional responses and behaviour? Psychogeography emphasises the connection between place and psychology. London, along with Paris, is acknowledged as one of the ultimate psychogeographical cities. It is also the setting for significant literary explorations of British Black and Asian migration. This chapter will seek to apply key ideas of Psychogeography to the study of literary representations of migrant experience in the postcolonial metropolitan centre by authors including Zadie Smith, Hanif Kureishi, and John Healy. The character of the city of London in the postcolonial era is a key consideration when exploring literary representations of the Black and South Asian Diaspora. The writers in question explore the intricate connections between space, place, objects, emotion, and memory, and superimpose these themes onto fundamental explorations of postcolonial experience in contemporary Britain.

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