Abstract:
This article examines how Imraan Coovadia’s The Institute for Taxi Poetry uses the taxi
industry as a dynamic cultural space to explore intersections of mobility and identity
in an alternate post-apartheid South Africa. Drawing on Mary Louise Pratt’s concept of
contact zones and Mimi Sheller’s framework of mobility justice, this article argues that
Coovadia reimagines the taxi as a metaphorical and literal space where diverse social
and cultural interactions manifest. Through a comparative analysis of two central
characters—Solly Greenfields and Gerome Geromian—the article highlights differing
poetic expressions and scales of mobility. While Geromian’s cosmopolitan approach
embodies global mobility, Greenfields’s deeply local focus challenges narrow interpretations of rootedness, reflecting a local scale of mobility and intimate relationship with
his environment. The article contends that Coovadia critiques simplistic binaries of
local and global by emphasising how these scales coexist and shape individual and
collective identities. Ultimately, The Institute for Taxi Poetry reconfigures the taxi and
its associated poetry as sites of cultural connection and negotiation, reflecting broader
social dynamics and tensions within a post-apartheid context.
