Urban generations: Post-colonial cities
01-03 October 2004
Conference Abstracts
41. Procter, James; University of Stirling, UK: "Maggie and the metropolis, or Thatcher and diaspora"
Thatcherism has been debated at length within politics,
sociology, economics and cultural studies. However, little has been
said about the generative impact of Thatcherism within the context
of literary and cultural representation. This paper examines the
representation of Thatcher and the city within postcolonial black
British writing and film between the late 1970s and early 1990s,
from the 'Tatcha' poems of Linton Kwesi Johnson, to the 'Maggie
Torture' of Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses. The metonymic link
established between the metropolis and Thatcher within this generation
of cultural production runs counter to the dominant imaginary of
Thatcherism, with its cultural investment in the rural landscapes
of heritage England. By reading Maggie's metropolis through the
representations of the city's postcolonial migrants, this paper
aims to generate a debate about the conjunctural significance of
diaspora aesthetics and theory during the 1980s.
