Postcolonial Possibilities of Architectural History: Questions and Concerns in Reading the Urbanisms of the Global South

Dasgupta, Soumya

Title:

Postcolonial Possibilities of Architectural History: Questions and Concerns in Reading the Urbanisms of the Global South

dc.contributor.author	Dasgupta, Soumya
dc.contributor.corporatename	Georgia Institute of Technology. College of Design	en_US
dc.contributor.corporatename	Georgia Institute of Technology. School of Architecture	en_US
dc.contributor.corporatename	University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign	en_US
dc.date.accessioned	2021-03-04T02:52:33Z
dc.date.available	2021-03-04T02:52:33Z
dc.date.issued	2021-02
dc.description	ConCave Ph.D. Symposium 2020: Divergence in Architectural Research, March 5-6, 2020, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA.	en_US
dc.description.abstract	As the twenty-first century unfolds before us, the megacities of Global South experience unprecedented urbanization characterized by informalizations of urban spaces. While several new theoretical perspectives from fields such as geography, sociology, and urban planning are contributing heavily in understanding and explaining these mega-urbanisms of the Global South and their complicated and contested narratives, Architectural History, as a discipline, still struggles to articulate these transformations meaningfully. In the context of this epistemological dichotomy, this paper delves into an academic multilogue between architectural history as a methodological apparatus to read and understand space, recent theoretical insights from related built-environment disciplines that reflect on the Global South, and critical theories that help us understand socio-spatial processes, productions, and practices. In doing so, this paper first critiques the role of architectural history in its inability to include much of the spatial narratives of the Global South and questions the canonical understandings of architecture that most of its present academic pedagogy perpetuates. Second, it discusses the potentials of how and what architectural history and theory can learn from contemporary discourses in neighboring subjects. Third, it calls for a postcolonial intervention into architectural history and theory to enunciate the spatial narratives of the understudied Global South. Further, by configuring a critical conversation between theoretical perspectives such as Bhabha’s ‘hybridity’, Lefebvre’s triad of spatial productions, Certeau’s ‘strategies and tactics,’ Bayat’s ‘quiet encroachment,’ and Harvey’s ‘insurgent architect’ this paper proposes an analytical framework that might help us read the complex, entangled, and contested urbanisms of the Global South and the history of their architectural productions.	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/1853/64334
dc.identifier.uri	https://doi.org/10.35090/gatech/80
dc.language.iso	en_US	en_US
dc.publisher	Georgia Institute of Technology	en_US
dc.relation.ispartof	http://hdl.handle.net/1853/64350
dc.relation.ispartofseries	ConCave Ph.D. Symposium 2020 ; Divergence in Architectural Research
dc.subject	Architectural history	en_US
dc.subject	Postcolonial studies	en_US
dc.subject	Global South	en_US
dc.title	Postcolonial Possibilities of Architectural History: Questions and Concerns in Reading the Urbanisms of the Global South	en_US
dc.title.alternative	POSTCOLONIAL POSSIBILITIES OF ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY: Questions and Concerns in reading the Urbanisms of the Global South	en_US
dc.type	Text
dc.type.genre	Proceedings
dspace.entity.type	Publication
local.contributor.corporatename	College of Design
local.contributor.corporatename	School of Architecture
local.relation.ispartofseries	School of Architecture Symposia
relation.isOrgUnitOfPublication	c997b6a0-7e87-4a6f-b6fc-932d776ba8d0
relation.isOrgUnitOfPublication	0533a423-c95b-41cf-8e27-2faee06278ad
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