Spectacle and Suffering: The Mumbai slum as a worlded space

This paper examines the relationship between spectacle and worlding. Using Dharavi as the site (cite) of analysis, the paper considers how slum tours, art and television documentaries produce particular narratives and imaginaries of the slum. We move beyond the discussions of voyeurism and the aestheticisation of poverty and suggest that the knowledge of the slum is entangled with the motives, preconceptions and experiences of multiple actors, giving the slum a relation with the “world” that holds opportunities to disrupt hegemonic views of urbanism, while centering its own position as a locus of knowledge on urban poverty. The paper suggests that analysing the spectacle of the slum through the lens of worlding offers ways to think critically of how urban space is reordered and urban knowledge is produced and circulated.