Representation and Representations of the Railways of Colonial and Post-Colonial South Asia

2003/05/01 by Ian J. Kerr · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies #Colonial History and Postcolonial Studies #Travel Writing and Literature

paper · doi:10.1017/s0026749x03002026

Abstract

This paper offers a preliminary exploration of the multi-faceted ways in which the railways of South Asia have been represented in textual, aural and visual media. I do this despite my reservations about some representational-type studies presented via language and theories I find opaque. Nonetheless, I do want to signal that I am not a closed-minded trainspotter; I am not one of those railway historians a reviewer of Michael Freeman's Railways and the Victorian Imagination labelled ‘“trainspotters” to a man…combining the enthusiasms of the hobbyist and the econometrician in scholarly mimicry of that singular British type.’ The reviewer, of course, was referring to those railway devotees who haunt British railway stations desperately taking pictures of locomotives and recording their serial numbers and not to the alienated characters in a recent movie of similar name.

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