Citation

Scott B. J. Postcolonial Writ. 2008; 44(4): 345-354.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/17449850802410457

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This article explores the representation of communal violence in Vibhuti Narain Rai's 1988 novel Curfew in the City. Through a close reading of Rai's novel, I argue that such violence serves to “communalize” urban space on the Indian subcontinent – framing and reframing the boundaries between communities, establishing distinct ethno-religious enclaves, and attaching new meanings to public and private space. I then discuss the adverse impact this reconfiguration of space has on the status and disposition of minorities, alienating them from their environment and inducing in them a profound sense of displacement or “unbelonging”. In order to clarify this process, I invoke the concept of the architectural uncanny – Anthony Vidler's term for the feelings of “estrangement, alienation, exile, and homelessness” to which modern architecture gives rise. In this instance, however, I use it to describe the way in which communal violence defamiliarizes the Indian city, and in so doing transforms minority communities into symbolic foreigners or “virtual” refugees, permanently estranged from the urban space they occupy.