Mofussil Metropolis: Civil sites,uncivil cinema and provinciality in Dhaka city

Abstract

This article explores the charismatic afterlife of wilting civic institutions and public sites in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Revolving around the career of an assistant film director involved in the production of cheap action movies, I argue that his love for and use of urban fine arts venues puts a spin on proclamations of the death of modernist urbanism and city planning in postcolonial cities. While such institutions and ideals have in many ways run aground in Dhaka too, the fervour with which its signs, forms and sites are embraced by urbanites associated with the rural hinterland or mofussil, suggests that their aesthetic surplus is up for grabs. Rethinking the relationship between the mofussil and the metropolis in Bangladesh, I suggest that the uncivil mofussil outside to urbane and progressive sophistication has become its inside.