Place in Post-colonial Theory and Practice in Three Representative Novels

Abstract

In his book, Postmodern Geographies, E.W.Soja explains the spatial views of art historian and playwright, John Berger as follows: "we no longer depend on a story-line unfolding sequentially, an ever-accumulating history marching straight forward in plot and denouement, for too much is happening against the grain of time, too much is continually traversing the story-line laterally [...] Simultaneities intervene, extending our point of view outward in an infinite number of lines connecting the subject to a whole world of comparable instances, complicating the temporal flow of meaning[...] The new, the novel, now must involve an explicitly geographical as well as historical configuration and projection" (23). This view explains the works of the post-colonial writers this study has dealt with.

Their geographical imaginations have illuminated some very provocative border and mapping metaphors creating new historical and political projections and hence new codes of identification and recognition. Their disruption of the chronological sequence of time in their subject of interpretation has meant a disruption of the knowledges circulated by imperialism and by the modern post-colonial nation. The role of these intellectuals has therefore become of paramount importance in times when methods justifying structures (pathologies) of power are being vigorously challenged and demystified.