The contributions collected in the second volume of Resistance and the City are devoted to the three markers of identity that cultural studies has recognised as paramount for our understanding of difference, inequality, and solidarity in modern societies: race, class, and gender.
These categories, tightly linked to the mechanics of power, domination and subordination, have often played an eminent role in contemporary struggles and clashes in urban space. The confluence of people from diverse ethnic, social, and sexual backgrounds in the city has not only raised their awareness of a variety of life concepts and motivated them to negotiate their own positions, but has also encouraged them to develop strategies of resistance against patterns of social and spatial exclusion.
Contributors: Oliver von Knebel Doeberitz, Barbara Korte, Anna Lienen, Gill Plain, Frank Erik Pointner, Katrin Röder, Ingrid von Rosenberg, Mark Schmitt, Ralf Schneider, Christoph Singer, Sabine Smith, Merle Tönnies, Ger Zielinski
Christoph Ehland is Professor of English Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of Paderborn in Germany. In his writing he focuses on Scottish Literature, the early modern period, and literary commemorative culture.
Pascal Fischer is Professor of English and American Cultural Studies at the University of Bamberg in Germany. He has published on Jewish-American literature and culture, the Romantic period, and contemporary culture.
Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors General Introduction Christoph Ehland and Pascal Fischer Introduction: Negotiating Urban Space Christoph Ehland and Pascal Fischer
Part 1: Race and Ethnicity
1 Black Citizens – British Spaces: Struggles in the 1970s and 1980s and Cinematic Representations Ingrid von Rosenberg
2 Resisting Topographies: Immigration, Space and the City in Contemporary British Film Ralf Schneider
3 Heterotopias as Spaces of Resistance in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1981) Katrin Röder
4 Changing Uses of the City in Contemporary Black British Novels Merle Tönnies and Anna Lienen
Part 2: Social Class
5 “Poor is Cool”: The Working-Classes as Myth in Pulp’s “Common People” Christoph Singer
6 Chavs: The Clash of Social Classes in Urban Britain Frank Erik Pointner
7 The Other Dublin: Homelessness, Abject Comedy and Challenges to the Urban Order in Lenny Abrahamson’s Adam & Paul (2004) Mark Schmitt
8 In the Ghetto: Inequality, Riots and Resistance in London-Based Science Fiction of the Twenty-First Century Barbara Korte
Part 3: Gender and Sexuality
9 ‘Lost to the Streets’: Violence, Space and Gender in Urban Crime Fiction Gill Plain
10 The Urban Residential Balcony as Interstitial Site Sabine H. Smith
11 Muslims against Gays? Faith, Sexuality, Resistance and London’s East End Oliver von Knebel Doeberitz
12 Scenic Subversions: On Bruce LaBruce’s Re-queering of That Cold Day in the Park Ger Zielinski Index