‘We lived upon jagged teeth in the dark’: The Housing Estate in Guy Gunaratne’s In Our Mad and Furious City and Nikesh Shukla’s Run, Riot
This article examines the representation of the council estate in Guy Gunaratne’s In Our Mad and Furious City (2018) and Nikesh Shukla’s Run, Riot (2018) using a geocritical lens. Both novels feature violent and exclusionary spaces where young adults exist in liminal states akin to Agamben’s ‘bare l...
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| Publicat a: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/ebc, |
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| Autor principal: | |
| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Idioma: | Anglais |
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Études britanniques contemporaines
2022
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| Accés en línia: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Sumari: | This article examines the representation of the council estate in Guy Gunaratne’s In Our Mad and Furious City (2018) and Nikesh Shukla’s Run, Riot (2018) using a geocritical lens. Both novels feature violent and exclusionary spaces where young adults exist in liminal states akin to Agamben’s ‘bare life’. The lack of agency experienced by the characters in these novels is rendered ever more salient through themes of surveillance and hypervisibility. Yet, these novels also subvert representations of the housing estate, by depicting it as a heterogeneous and multi-dimensional site, particularly exemplified through the emancipatory potential offered by rap and grime music. Ultimately, these novels challenge the compartmentalisation of BAME fiction and offer new ways of thinking about the inner city in contemporary British literature. |
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