Spectacle and Suffering: The Mumbai slum as a worlded space

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between spectacle and worlding. Using Dharavi as the site (cite) of analysis, the paper considers how slum tours, art and television documentaries produce particular narratives and imaginaries of the slum. We move beyond the discussions of voyeurism and the aestheticization of poverty and suggest, that the knowledge of the slum is entangled with the motives, preconceptions and experiences of multiple actors, giving the slum a relation with the 'world' that holds opportunities to disrupt hegemonic views of urbanism in Mumbai, while centering its own position as a locus of knowledge on urban poverty. The paper suggests that analysing the spectacle of the slum through the lens of worlding offers ways to think critically of how urban space is reordered and urban knowledge is produced and circulated.

Socio-spatial legibility, discipline, and gentrification through favela upgrading in Rio de Janeiro

“…Even though brief visits to Babilônia might make outsiders more sympathetic towards residents, they do not provide enough impact or knowledge to further their understanding of local life experiences or to make visitors rethink issues of poverty and inequality (Jones and Sanyal 2015).…”

On the Question of Using the Concept ‘Slum Tourism’ for Urban Tourism in Stigmatised Neighbourhoods in Inner City Johannesburg

“…In my 2014 paper, the specific interest was in urban regeneration and tourism's role in it, but of course other questions can and have been asked: how is poverty represented in these tours (Dürr and Jaffe 2012;Dyson 2012;Jones and Sanyal 2015;Meschkank 2010)? What does the political economy of these tours look like (Ekdale 2010;Koens 2012;Rogerson 2004)?…”

Imagining Africa’s futures in two Caine Prize-winning stories: Henrietta Rose-Innes’s “Poison” and NoViolet Bulawayo’s “Hitting Budapest”

“…In her critique of the science fiction thriller film District 9 , Adéle Nel (2012) explores how the pervasive imagery of abjection in the portrayal of a Johannesburg slum appeals to what Barbara Creed (1993: 10) describes as the “desire […] for perverse pleasure”. Similarly, Gareth Jones and Ramola Sanyal interrogate the ways in which the production of the postcolonial “slum as spectacle becomes part of a fluid representational stock of images and experiences that circulate, with the potential to be picked up and acted upon by diverse actors” (2015: 433). Focusing specifically on representations of Dharavi, one of the largest slums in the Indian city of Mumbai, they argue that the slum has assumed “a representational significance far greater than an immediate concern with housing conditions or service provision” and has increasingly become “a popular subject for novelists, journalists and academics […] tourism, art, film and documentary” (2015: 434).…”