[spectre] Sarai Reader 02 : The Cities of Everyday Life

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

'Sarai Reader 02:
The Cities of Everyday Life'
http://www.sarai.net/journal/reader2.html (available online)

This year's Sarai Reader brings together a range of critical thinking 
on urban life and the contemporary, marked by spreading media 
cultures, new social conflict and globalisation. Scholars, media 
practitioners, critics and activists use a flow of images, memories 
and hidden realities to create a fascinating array of original 
interventions in thinking about cities today. In the context of 
India, where a large part of this reader has been edited, this is 
significant, given the frugality of writing on city life in this part 
of the world.

With essays, images, analyses, and manifestoes The Cities of Everyday 
Life reflects on the contemporary urban condition, detours into the 
back alleys of the global city, takes on media representations of 
terror and war, examines the politics of information, anticipates the 
futures of digital urbanism, registers the details of media flows, 
explores representations of the city, and looks at globalisation from 
below.

Editors : Ravi Vasudevan, Ravi Sundaram, Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica 
Narula, Geert Lovink, Shuddhabrata Sengupta

Published by
Sarai, CSDS+ The Society for Old & New Media
2002

For orders,
email: reader@sarai.net
or write to Sarai, CSDS, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110054, India
Hardback: Rs. 395, US$25, ¤29
Paperback: Rs.250, US$15, ¤17
376 pages, 14.5cm X 21cm
ISBN 81-901429-0-9

Distributed by Rainbow Publishers Ltd. [India]
email: rainbow_p@vsnl.net

International sales:
Autonomedia, New York
Order online from: www.autonomedia.org
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Table of Contents

Introduction - vi

URBAN MORPHOLOGIES - 1
The Urban Turn - Gyan Prakash - 2
Urban Physiognomies - Radhika Subramaniam - 8
The Death Of An Empire - Ashis Nandy - 14
Theatre Of The Urban: The strange case of the Monkeyman - Aditya Nigam - 22
Claims On Cleanliness: Environment and justice in contemporary Delhi 
- Awadhendra Sharan - 31

THE CITY AS SPECTACLE and PERFORMANCE - 39
Parsi Theatre And The City: Locations, patrons, audiences - Kathryn Hansen - 
40
Citybeats: Urban folk music in late-modern Calcutta - Avishek Ganguly - 51
The Exhilaration Of Dread: Genre, narrative form and film style in 
contemporary
urban action films - Ravi S. Vasudevan - 59
Ruin And The Uncanny City: Memory, despair and death in Parinda - 
Ranjani Mazumdar - 68
The Metropolis And Mental Strife: The city in science fiction cinema 
- Nitin Govil - 79
Screening Injustice: Race, violence and media flows - Bhrigupati Singh - 85

THE STREET IS THE CARRIER AND THE SIGN - 93
Raqs Media Collective

FOR THOSE WHO LIVE IN CITIES - 107
Seeing + Believing - Lisa Haskel - 108
Shops on the Move (Extract) - Uday Prakash - 112
Spaced Out: A personal geography to México City - Fran Ilich - 114
Past Places/Future Spaces: Reconstructing post-war Beirut - Yasmeen Arif - 117
Imagining Srinagar-Sarajevo - Abir Bazaz - 127
Sleepless in Delhi (Extract) - Gagan Gill  - 130
Slow Shutter/Full Open - Monica Narula - 131
Lagos: Love It or Love It - Niji Akanni - 136
Walls - Monica Narula - 142
World Made Flesh - Matthew Fuller - 144
Mechanicalcutta: Industrialisation, new media in the 19th century - 
Debjani Sengupta - 149
decoded+delhi+denuded=Google+Search - Parvati Sharma - 159
Office Days (Extract) - Shrinath - 154
Long Bus Rides - Joy Chatterjee - 165
Cancer Wards - Sopan Joshi - 171
CYBERMOHALLA DIARIES - 177
Azra Tabassum, Shamsher Ali, Suraj Rai, Neelofer, Ayesha, Shahjehan, 
Bobby, Yashodha, Mehrunissa

9/11- MEDIA CITY - 191
A Day That Will Live In...? - Patrick Deer + Toby Miller - 192
Responses To 9/11: Individual and collective dimensions - Rajeev Bhargava - 
200
Violence And Translation - Veena Das - 205
Branding The War: Terror and the commodity image - William Mazzarella - 211
"The One Who Really Scares Me" - Paul Virilio interviewed by Dorothea 
Hahn - 216
Selections: Discussion thread post 9/11 - reader-list@sarai.net - 222
Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Rehan Hasan Ansari, Shammi Nanda, William Mazzarella,
Kali Tal, Ravi Sundaram, Zamrooda Khanday, Frederic Madre, Ravikant, 
Jeebesh Bagchi
The obliqueWTC: Lars Spuybroek - 234

VIRTUAL ARCHITECTURE + DIGITAL URBANISM - 237
Hyper-Architecture - Ole Bouman - 238
Diagramming - Lars Spuybroek interviewed by Cho Im Sik - 243
Seeing Cyberspace: The electrical infrastructure as architecture - 
Brian Caroll - 249
Archifesto: Towards a digital urbanism of radical difference - Archimedia - 
269

THE POLITICS OF INFORMATION - 275
Banking (on) Biologicals: Commodifying the global circulations of
human genetic material - Kaushik Sunder Rajan - 277
The Face Of The Future: Biometric surveillance and progress - Rana 
Dasgupta - 290
Everyday Surveillance: ID cards, cameras and a database of ditties -
Shuddhabrata Sengupta - 297
Blind Intelligence - Sam de Silva - 302
Surveillance: After September 11, 2001 - David Lyon - 306
New Rules, New Actonomy - Geert Lovink + Florian Schneider - 314
Random Thoughts: About the Indymedia network, tactical mediaŠ - Evan 
Henshaw-Plath - 320
The Case for Biolinuxes: And other pro-commons innovations - K. Ravi 
Srinivas - 321
Open Publishing - Mathew Arnison - 329
Openlaw - http://eon.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/ - 334

<ALT/OPTION> - 337
Panic, War & Semio-Kapital - Franco Berardi Bifo - 338
Globalisation From Below: Migration, sovereignty, communication - 
McKenzie Wark - 342

THIS YEAR/THIS CITY - 350
internal@sarai.net

Notes on contributors - 364
Acknowledgments - 364