Between Memory and Amnesia: Some Reflections on Shanghai's Commodified Cityscape

In this short essay I look at Shanghai’s commodified cityscape in the context of colonial modernity and global capitalism. In the first part I draw from the work of Leo Ou-Fan Lee and Wen-hsin Yeh to evoke the spectacle of modernity in everyday Shanghai life in the interwar period. In the second part, I look at the emergence of Buddhism-inspired urban formations that participate in the production of Shanghai’s present under globalization and the cultural logic of late capitalism.