Cover; Contents; Preface and Acknowledgments; Abbreviations, Glossary, and Linguistic Conventions; Introduction: Imagining the Edgy City; 1. 1936: Africa's Wonder City; 2. 1956: Genres of Johannesburg; 3. 1976: Soweto Erupts into Johannesburg; 4. 1996: Edgy City; 5. 2012: City in the World; References; Index; A; B; C; D; E; F; G; H; J; K; L; M; N; O; P; R; S; T; U; V; W; X; Y; Z
Summary
This study of Johannesburg examines writing, performing, building, and urban spatial practices and their agents, whose cosmopolitan diversity and capacity for invention challenge the normativity of modernity in the global north. It begins with the Empire Exhibition of 1936, and moves on to explore artistic creative responses to the rise of apartheid particularly in Sophiatown around 1956; poetry and performance around the Soweto uprising of 1976, and fictional and visual responses to the crime and disorder of 1996. It concludes with an evaluation of artists and planners collaborating in urban renewal projects in 2012