Spatial Boundaries, Abounding Spaces

Colonial expansion and spatial grammar in French-language works from different historical and national contexts

Colonialism advanced its project of territorial expansion by changing the very meaning of borders and space. The colonial project scripted a unipolar spatial discourse that saw the colonies as an extension of European borders. In his monograph, Mohit Chandna engages with narrations of spatial conflicts in French and Francophone literature and film from the nineteenth to the early twenty-first century. In literary works by Jules Verne, Ananda Devi, and Patrick Chamoiseau, and film by Michael Haneke, Chandna analyzes the depiction of ever-changing borders and spatial grammar within the colonial project. In so doing, he also examines the ongoing resistance to the spatial legacies of colonial practices that act as omnipresent enforcers of colonial borders. Literature and film become sites that register colonial spatial paradigms and advance competing narratives that fracture the dominance of these borders.

Through its analyses Spatial Boundaries, Abounding Spaces shows that colonialism is not a finished project relegated to our past. Colonialism is present in the here and now, and exercises its power through the borders that define us.

Ebook available in Open Access.
This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).

“The colonial project is far from over and it continues to determine our lives through the borders that surround us. In order to understand here and now, one needs to start with there and then.”, Mohit Chandna

Chapter 1: Introduction: Charting Course

Anchoring Space - Doing Space - Geographies of Literature - Postmodern Spaces – Material -  Histories

Chapter 2: Around the World in Eighty (One) Days

Section 1. Understanding Verne: Laying the Groundwork

Verne and the World - Verne’s Geography - Geography on Verne - Reading Verne’s Geographies - Rounding up the World - Capital Repetitions: Monghir

Section 2. Opium Silence and Nineteenth-Century French Literature

Colonizing Hong Kong  - Illegal Opium and Colonial Wealth  - Opium Cities  - Opium Race

Chapter 3: Dislocating the Indian Nation: Ananda Devi’s Homelands

Global Pathways - Along a Local Road - Dislocating Location - Grounding Identity - Patriarchal Homelands - Tango with India - Delhi’s Underbelly - Antipodal Itineraries - Desert Safari - Producing Dissent - Rediscovering India

Chapter 4: Martinique: Space, Language, Gender

Section 1. Contextualizing Texaco

Texaco and its Significations - A Spatial Metaphor - Literary Margins: City and Language - Marie-Sophie as Texaco - Chamoiseau and Feminism - Reinventing the City

Section 2. Martinique’s Literary Identity and French Borders

Martinique: Colonial History, Postcolonial Literature - French Borders, Martinican Text

Section 3. Text, Texaco and Landscape

Texaco: Space and Language - Rewriting l’En-ville

Section 4. France, Martinique and Marie-Sophie’s Body

Marie-Sophie and Texaco - Marie-Sophie’s body and Martinique

Chapter 5: Out of Place: French Family at (Algerian) War 205

Immaterial Differences - Locating Caché - White Lies - Hidden Agenda - Colonial Family; National Lies - Colonial Past; Cinematic Present - Escaping Images - Deadly Images

Epilogue: Interjecting Passages

Notes

Bibliography

Format: Monograph - free ebook - ePUB

302 pages

ISBN: 9789461663849

Publication: August 13, 2021

Languages: English

Download:: https://muse.jhu.edu/book/85556