Learning from Lahore

“It is about time that we give an account of world-making in the aftermath of empire from the perspective of its postcolonial dreamers and builders. Chris Moffat offers us more than just an itinerary of modernism from the global south–this is a truly vibrant intellectual history.”–Vazira Zamindar, Brown University“While the expediencies and profanations of architectural expressions of modernity often cause them to escape the attention of serious historians and theorists–as ethnonationalist and ideological entanglements, or commercial and other contingent forces limit modern architecture’s integrity as an object for intensive scholarly philosophical inquiry–Chris Moffat recovers architectural modernism, with custodial generosity, as a subject of intellectual history. Restoring the capacity of architectural form, environments, and practices to accommodate the profound problem of the postcolony, one embedded in the vexations and potentials ever present in the idea of Pakistan–and, indeed, through the visions, memories, and hands of its makers–Lahore after Modernism brings capacious architectural histories into the narrative, along with a persistent demand to leave big questions of meaning-making under negotiation.”–Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi, Barnard College, Columbia University

Chris Moffat is Senior Lecturer in South Asian History at Queen Mary University of London. He is author of India’s Revolutionary Inheritance: Politics and the Promise of Bhagat Singh (2019).