Atlas

Atlas

The Archaeology of an Imaginary City

  • Author: Dung, Kai-cheung; Hansson, Anders; McDougall, Bonnie; Dung, Kai-cheung
  • Publisher: Columbia University Press
  • ISBN: 9780231161008
  • eISBN Pdf: 9780231504225
  • Place of publication:  New York , United States
  • Year of digital publication: 2012
  • Month: July
  • Language: English
Set in the long-lost City of Victoria (a fictional world similar to Hong Kong), Atlas is written from the unified perspective of future archaeologists struggling to rebuild a thrilling metropolis. Divided into four sections—"Theory," "The City," "Streets," and "Signs"—the novel reimagines Victoria through maps and other historical documents and artifacts, mixing real-world scenarios with purely imaginary people and events while incorporating anecdotes and actual and fictional social commentary and critique.

Much like the quasi-fictional adventures in map-reading and remapping explored by Paul Auster, Jorge Luis Borges, and Italo Calvino, Dung Kai-cheung's novel challenges the representation of place and history and the limits of technical and scientific media in reconstructing a history. It best exemplifies the author's versatility and experimentation, along with China's rapidly evolving literary culture, by blending fiction, nonfiction, and poetry in a story about succeeding and failing to recapture the things we lose. Playing with a variety of styles and subjects, Dung Kai-cheung inventively engages with the fate of Hong Kong since its British "handover" in 1997, which officially marked the end of colonial rule and the beginning of an uncharted future.
  • Table of Contents
  • Preface: An Archaeology for the Future
  • Introduction
  • PART ONE: THEORY
  • 1. Counterplace
  • 2. Commonplace
  • 3. Misplace
  • 4. Displace
  • 5. Antiplace
  • 6. Nonplace
  • 7. Extraterritoriality
  • 8. Boundary
  • 9. Utopia
  • 10. Supertopia
  • 11. Subtopia
  • 12. Transtopia
  • 13. Multitopia
  • 14. Unitopia
  • 15. Omnitopia
  • PART TWO: THE CITY
  • 16. Mirage: City in the Sea
  • 17. Mirage: Towers in the Air
  • 18. Pottinger's Inverted Vision
  • 19. Gordon's Jail
  • 20. "Plan of the City of Victoria," 1889
  • 21. The Four Wan and the Nine Yeuk
  • 22. The Centaur of the East
  • 23. Scandal Point and the Military Cantonment
  • 24. Mr. Smith's One-Day Trip
  • 25. The View from Government House
  • 26. The Toad of Belcher's Dream
  • 27. The Return of Kwan Tai Loo
  • 28. The Curse of Tai Ping Shan
  • 29. War Game
  • PART THREE: STREETS
  • 30. Spring Garden Lane
  • 31. Ice House Street
  • 32. Sugar Street
  • 33. Tsat Tsz Mui Road
  • 34. Canal Road East and Canal Road West
  • 35. Aldrich Street
  • 36. Possession Street
  • 37. Sycamore Street
  • 38. Tung Choi Street and Sai Yeung Choi Street
  • 39. Sai Yee Street
  • 40. Public Square Street
  • 41. Cedar Street
  • PART FOUR: SIGNS
  • 42. The Decline of the Legend
  • 43. The Eye of the Typhoon
  • 44. Chek Lap Kok Airport
  • 45. The Metonymic Spectrum
  • 46. The Elevation of Imagination
  • 47. Geological Discrimination
  • 48. North-Oriented Declination
  • 49. The Travel of Numbers
  • 50. The Tomb of Signs
  • 51. The Orbit of Time
  • Acknowledgments
  • Author & Translators

Subjects

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