This article explores notions of archive and infrastructure in the construction of metropolitan urbanism in the West. Building on this exploration, the author proposes the concept of “city-as-archive” as a tool for studying contemporary urbanism and for moving beyond the political geography of disciplinary epistemology in the social sciences. The notion of “city-as-archive” elaborates a new way of understanding archives—as principles of ordering stimuli upon which future transactions are based, rather than as sites for the preservation of a past that has been deemed to be of collective significance. This understanding builds analogically upon theories about urban space, life, and experience. By deploying this concept of “city-as-archive,” the author suggests that we are in a better position to understand the city space of mediation between modern India and the modern West rather than as yet another site of Indian exceptionalism.
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