Postcolonial Literary Geographies: Out of Place

245 Pages·2016·2.193 MB·English

by  John Thieme (auth.)

This book examines how ideas about place and space have been transformed in recent decades.
It offers a unique understanding of the ways in which postcolonial writers have contested
views of place as fixed and unchanging and are remapping conceptions of world geography,
with chapters on cartography, botany and gardens, spice, ecologies, animals and zoos, and
cities, as well as reference to the importance of archaeology and travel in such debates. Writers
whose work receives detailed attention include Amitav Ghosh, Derek Walcott, Jamaica Kincaid,
Salman Rushdie, Michael Ondaatje and Robert Kroetsch. Challenging both older colonial and P
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more recent global constructions of place, the book argues for an environmental politics that
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is attentive to the concerns of disadvantaged peoples, animal rights and ecological issues. Its
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range and insights make it essential reading for anyone interested in the changing physical and C
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is Senior Fellow at the University of East Anglia, UK. He previously held Chairs at
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the University of Hull and London South Bank University, and has also taught at the Universities
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Post-Colonial Con-Texts: Writing Back to the A
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JOHN THIEME
Postcolonial Literary Geographies

John   Thieme
Postcolonial Literary
Geographies
Out of Place
John   Thieme
University of East Anglia
Norwich, United Kingdom
ISBN 978-1-137-45686-1 ISBN 978-1-137-45687-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-45687-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016936396
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CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
From one point of view the gestation of this book has taken place over a
long time, but it was not conceived of as a monograph until I gave a paper
entitled ‘Postcolonial Mappae Mundi’, which is reworked here as the fi rst
half of Chapter 2 , at a 2010 conference in Rome. There a chance remark
from a perceptive stranger, Flaminia Nicora of the University of Bergamo,
made me realize that I had been worrying away at issues related to postco-
lonial geography for a long time. This prompted me to revisit some of my
earlier essays, to write several new chapters and to tighten the theoretical
framework that was implicit throughout.
The unplanned, albeit serendipitous, nature of the book’s genesis and
progress, makes it more than usually diffi cult to acknowledge all the peo-
ple whose insights have infl uenced me. The ideas of several cohorts of my
MA students at the University of East Anglia have certainly fed into the
book, and conversations with my PhD supervisees Maria Sabina Alexandru
and Madhubanti Bhattacharyya at UEA and Vassilena Parashkevoka from
London South Bank University have informed my comments on Indian
constructions of space. I also owe a debt to a number of contributors to
The Journal of Commonwealth Literature , particularly Michael Niblett and
Ella Soper-Jones, and my thinking about place in Anglophone Canadian
writing has been infl uenced by Marta Dvořák and Claire Omhovère.
Of the authors discussed, Robert Kroetsch and Sam Selvon were par-
ticularly kind in talking to me about the Prairies and London respectively.
Ira Raja opened windows on the importance of food spaces and spice in
Indian culture and she also introduced me to some of the texts discussed
in Chapter 4 . My remarks on the breadfruit in Chapter 3 are informed
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
by conversations with Evadne Peters, Alyma Moore and several other
Guyanese friends and acquaintances. My sister, Kathy Williamson, and
Chris Cook supported my interest in maps. I am indebted to Edward
Larrissy for a comment that fed into my discussion of Byron’s response
to spice and to Mahashweta Bhattacharyya for talking to me about
Buddhadeva Basu’s Bengali translations of Rilke. Geeta Chhabra kindly
confi rmed my remarks on the location of Aravind Adiga’s L ast Man in
Tower .
Among the many people who generously shared their responses to zoos
and animals in captivity, I am indebted to Chu-chueh, Nabila Marzouk,
Marjan Abdolahi and David Garfi eld, and I owe particular thanks to Asis
De, who enabled me to visit the Kolkata Zoo and Botanical Gardens
vicariously by sending me information and photographs. As Chapter 6
was nearing completion, it was a pleasure to be in dialogue with Richa
Gobburu and her students at the Valley School, Bangalore, particularly
Shringi Diva Vikram.
I am grateful to the following for permission to include reworked ver-
sions of my essays that they helped to see into print:
Antonella Riem, Stefano Mercanti and the editorial board of L e
Simplegadi for sections of Chapter 2 , which are adapted from ‘Postcolonial
Mappae Mundi’, L e Simplegadi: Rivista internazionale on-line di lingue e
letterature moderne , 2012, 10, Year X: 47–66.
Bénédicte Ledent and Marc Delrez and L3 at the University of Liège
for an earlier version of a part of Chapter 2 that was originally published
as ‘After Greenwich: Crossing Meridians in Post-Colonial Literatures’, in
The Contact and the Culmination , ed. Marc Delrez and Bénédicte Ledent,
Liège: L3, Liège Language and Literature, 1997: 353–63.
Catherine Delmas, André Dodeman and Peter Lang, Bern for material
in the fi rst half of Chapter 3 , which fi rst appeared in ‘After the Bounty:
Botany and Botanical Tropes in Caribbean Writing’, in R e/membering
Place , ed. Catherine Delmas and André Dodeman, Bern: Peter Lang,
2013: 13–31.
Wolfgang Zach and Stauffenburg Verlag, Tübingen for material in
Chapter 4 that was published in an earlier incarnation in ‘“Lucent syrops,
tinct with cinnamon”: Romantic Spice, Postcolonial Spice’, in L iteratures
in English: Priorities of Research , ed. Wolfgang Zach and Michael Kenneally,
Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 2008: 149–65.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii
These four essays had earlier seen the light of day as plenary papers deliv-
ered at conferences in Rome, Oxford, Grenoble and Leeds respectively.
Ben Doyle and Tomas René have made it a particular pleasure to work
with Palgrave Macmillan, because of their encouragement, professional-
ism and unfailing promptness in answering queries. At home Barbara was,
as ever, longsuffering, while I beavered away at the manuscript, and Bobo
arrived in time to put her paw-print on its fi nal draft.

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ONTENTS
1 Introduction: Exploring Space, Excavating Place 1
2 Postcolonial Mappae Mundi 15
3 After the Bounty: Botany and Botanical Tropes 41
4 ‘Lucent Syrops, Tinct with Cinnamon’: Romantic Spice,
Postcolonial Spice 7 7
5 Borrowing the Earth: Postcolonial Ecologies 1 01
6 Paper Tigers and Other Therianthropes 131
7 Urban Chronotopes: London and Bombay 177
8 Travelling Places: A Coda 2 15
Index 2 23
ix