Chronotopeography

Abstract

This paper explores the processes through which visceral experience is cultivated, packaged and commodi?ed in the Linguistic Landscape (LL) of South Delhi, India. We engage the theoretical concept of cultural chronotopes (Agha, 2007a) to demonstrate how spatially and temporally entwined experiences of nostalgia and modernity are produced in South Delhi’s commercial LL, and show how such positioning serves to compress or ?atten such experiences for ready consumption (Kockelman, 2006). Focusing on particularized chronotopes tied to a privileged and elite experience, imagination and aspiration, we highlight how discourses of the ‘ideal’ are reproduced and positioned as visceral through speci?c references or semiotic arrangements. In so doing, we discuss the quanti?cation of experience executed by these signs in commodifying the visceral, and the problematic way these instances propagate an idealized, sanitized and simpli?ed understanding of Indian rural communities, Indian history and Indian traditional practices.