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Disrupted Futures: Unpacking Metaphors of Marginalization in Eviction and Resettlement Narratives
Author(s) -
Ramakrishnan Kavita
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
antipode
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.177
H-Index - 98
eISSN - 1467-8330
pISSN - 0066-4812
DOI - 10.1111/anti.12067
Subject(s) - eviction , unpacking , performativity , sociology , embodied cognition , ethnography , narrative , aesthetics , metaphor , cityscape , gender studies , epistemology , anthropology , linguistics , political science , visual arts , art , law , philosophy
In this paper, I examine how linguistic tropes that emerged during ethnographic fieldwork in a Delhi resettlement colony both capture and reaffirm the experiences of forced eviction and marginalization on the urban periphery. By analyzing the urban subjectivities embedded in recurrent metaphors, I explore how people “make sense” of dispossession and ultimately, articulate their “place” in the city. Drawing on Lakoff and Johnson (1980, Metaphors We Live By ; 1999, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought ), I argue that the utilization of metaphors in everyday language influences how people structure their relationships—with the state, with other residents of the resettlement colony, and with the city itself—and captures the pervasive uncertainty of resettlement. Unpacking such metaphors as “guides” to thought and practice can contribute to theories on spaces of insecurity and performativity of the marginalized in the city.