Gender and Colonial Space

Abstract

This book is an analysis of the complex links between social relations—including notions of class, nationality and gender—and spatial relations, landscape, architecture and topography—in post-colonial contexts. Arguing against the psychoanalytic focus of much current post-colonial theory, it aims to set out in a new direction, drawing on a wide range of literary and non-literary texts to develop a more materialist approach. The book foregrounds gender in this field where it has often been marginalised by the critical orthodoxies, demonstrating its importance not only in spatial theorising in general, but in the post-colonial theorising of space in particular. Concentrating on the period of ‘high’ British colonialism at the close of the nineteenth century, it examines a range of colonial contexts, such as India, Africa, America, Canada, Australia and Britain, illustrating how relations must be analysed for the way in which different colonial contexts define and constitute each other.