“Musée de l’absence” and “Postcolonial flâneuse”

"“Musée de l’absence” and “Postcolonial flâneuse”." Journal of Postcolonial Writing, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), pp. 1–2

Author’s note

These poems are extracted from a wider collection of poetry and prose written as part of a creative-critical doctoral project titled “The Ontology of The Postcolonial Flâneuse: Decolonisation in British Muslim Women’s Writing”. Both poems engage with the view of the British Muslim woman as a postcolonial flâneuse to switch the role of the western gaze on British Muslim women to a British Muslim woman’s gaze on western cities and crowds. The postcolonial flâneuse highlights the need for inclusion of religious and cultural identity and consciousness that effects the existence, observation, and ideas of women strollers from marginalized groups and identities in the city. The poems are intended to contribute to wider discussions of re-examining the dominant model of flânerie in the context of colonial legacies within current society, such as class, race, and gender privilege and how the postcolonial flâneuse readdresses and destabilizes these within the “western hierarchy” framework.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ramisha Rafique

Ramisha Rafique is a Nottingham Trent University (NTU) Vice Chancellor Bursary-funded PhD candidate at NTU. Her creative-critical doctoral thesis explores the ontology of the postcolonial flâneuse, considering, class, language, religion, and global technological advancements. Her research interests include Islamophobia, British Muslim women’s writing, and flânerie. Ramisha’s poetry has featured in Bystander (Laundrette Books, 2017) and on the NTU Postcolonial Studies Centre website more recently (2021).