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In Divisible Cities takes Italo Calvino’s classic re-imagining of Venice, viewed in the mind’s eye from many different metaphysical angles, and projects it on to the world at large. Where the Italian saw his favorite city as an impossible metropolis of many moods, shades, and ways of being, this unauthorized sequel unpacks the Escheresque streets in unexpected directions. In Divisible Cities is thus an exercise in cartographic origami: the reflective and poetic result of the narrator’s desire to map hidden cities, secret cities, imaginary cities, impossible cities, and overlapping cities, existing beneath the familiar Atlas of everyday perception. Stitching these different places and spaces together is a “double helix” or “Siamese seduction” between the traveler and his romantic shadow, revealing — step by step — a clandestine itinerary of hidden affinities, nestled within the habitual rhythm of things. Matter matters. That’s what the drone of the city tells us. And yet we dream of something beyond these invisible walls. Were I an architect-deity, I would create an Escheresque subway system, linking all the cities in the world. The tunnels themselves, and the people decanted from one place to the other, would eventually create an Ecumenopolis: a single and continuous city, enlaced and endless. Were this the case I could get on the F train at Delancey Street, Manhattan, and — after a couple of changes mid-town — emerge in the night-markets of Taipei, or near the Roman baths of Budapest. Or perhaps even downtown Urville.

Cartography. --- Cities and towns. --- Urban geography. --- imaginary geography --- fiction --- travel --- love --- maps

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The history of footbinding is full of contradictions and unexpected turns. The practice originated in the dance culture of China's medieval court and spread to gentry families, brothels, maid's quarters, and peasant households. Conventional views of footbinding as patriarchal oppression often neglect its complex history and the incentives of the women involved. This revisionist history, elegantly written and meticulously researched, presents a fascinating new picture of the practice from its beginnings in the tenth century to its demise in the twentieth century. Neither condemning nor defending foot-binding, Dorothy Ko debunks many myths and misconceptions about its origins, development, and eventual end, exploring in the process the entanglements of male power and female desires during the practice's thousand-year history. Cinderella's Sisters argues that rather than stemming from sexual perversion, men's desire for bound feet was connected to larger concerns such as cultural nostalgia, regional rivalries, and claims of male privilege. Nor were women hapless victims, the author contends. Ko describes how women-those who could afford it-bound their own and their daughters' feet to signal their high status and self-respect. Femininity, like the binding of feet, was associated with bodily labor and domestic work, and properly bound feet and beautifully made shoes both required exquisite skills and technical knowledge passed from generation to generation. Throughout her narrative, Ko deftly wields methods of social history, literary criticism, material culture studies, and the history of the body and fashion to illustrate how a practice that began as embodied lyricism-as a way to live as the poets imagined-ended up being an exercise in excess and folly.

S11/0710 --- S11/0742 --- China: Social sciences--Women: general and before 1949 --- China: Social sciences--Footbinding --- Footbinding --- Bandage des pieds --- History --- Pathology --- Sociology of the family. Sociology of sexuality --- Human physiology --- China --- Binding of feet --- Foot --- Foot-binding --- Deformities, Artificial --- Artificial deformities --- Binding --- Abnormalities --- Social aspects. --- Feet --- Paw --- Paws --- Leg --- age of disavowal. --- beauty. --- china. --- chinese culture. --- chinese history. --- cultural nostalgia. --- dance culture. --- embodied lyricism. --- fangzu. --- fashion and clothing. --- female body. --- female desire. --- femininity. --- footbinding. --- gender expectations. --- gender performance. --- gender studies. --- high status. --- historical. --- history. --- imaginary geography. --- male desire. --- male power. --- male privilege. --- material culture studies. --- medieval court. --- men and women. --- patriarchal oppression. --- political. --- regional rivalry. --- self respect. --- social history. --- tianzu. --- Mutilations --- Images of women --- Female body --- Book