Gender and colonial space
Gender and colonial space
SARA MILLS
Copyright Date: 2005
Published by: Manchester University Press
Pages: 212
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt155jdx5
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Book Info
Gender and colonial space
Book Description:

Gender and colonial space is a trenchant analysis of the complex relation between social relations – including notions of class, nationality and gender – and spatial relations, landscape, architecture and topography – in post-colonial contexts. Arguing against much of the psychoanalytic focus of much current post-colonial theory, Mills 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. She 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, she adroitly examines a range of contexts, looking at 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.

eISBN: 978-1-84779-381-2
Subjects: Language & Literature
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  1. Front Matter
    Front Matter (pp. i-iv)
  2. Table of Contents
    Table of Contents (pp. v-vi)
  3. Acknowledgements
    Acknowledgements (pp. vii-viii)
  4. 1 Introduction
    1 Introduction (pp. 1-42)

    The aim of this book is to interrogate the process whereby spatial relations are constituted as gendered, raced and classed within the colonial and imperial context. I will be examining the way that certain forms of spatiality are institutionalised and normalised. My focus is principally on the period of ‘high’ British colonialism at the end of the nineteenth century. The reason for writing the book is not an archaeological exploration of a historical period, but is rather an attempt to understand something of the nature of the spatial relations which operate within post-colonial Britain and in other countries at the...

  5. 2 Colonial subjectivity, gender and space
    2 Colonial subjectivity, gender and space (pp. 43-70)

    The link between colonial subjectivity and spatial relations is relatively under-investigated and in this chapter I examine the way that spatial relations often determine and impact on the construction of colonial identities, and how subjectivities play a role in the construction and contesting of spatiality. Subjectivity has been analysed largely from the perspective of psychoanalysis and, because psychoanalysis is not able to analyse the historical specificity of the social and political context which determines certain types of subjectivity, I shall be drawing on discourse theory as a way of describing the discursive parameters within which British people within the imperial...

  6. 3 Knowing and viewing landscape
    3 Knowing and viewing landscape (pp. 71-101)

    This chapter examines the positions which one can take as an individual towards viewing or knowing about colonised land, and the way that these positions are determined by wider aesthetic and socio-political structures and categorisations. I argue that these structures are gendered at a stereotypical level. It is the argument of this chapter that, within the context of nineteenth-century British colonialism and imperialism the viewing of landscape moved from functioning as an aesthetic stance to being one of surveying and claiming, particularly for male travellers and settlers. However, this surveying stance is not unequivocally one of power and mastery as...

  7. 4 Public and domestic colonial architecture
    4 Public and domestic colonial architecture (pp. 102-135)

    This chapter analyses the specificity of colonial public and domestic architecture and focuses on the way that these forms of architecture developed out of a complex relationship with both metropolitan and indigenous styles of architecture. These new forms of architecture were both a reflection of and embodiment of cultural norms at a stereotypical level – how the British would like to be perceived, how they wanted their rule and their colonising to be seen. Whilst public colonial architectural space has been analysed in some detail, domestic architectural space is only beginning to be analysed, and its importance in terms of buttressing...

  8. 5 Indigenous spatiality within the colonial sphere
    5 Indigenous spatiality within the colonial sphere (pp. 136-157)

    When colonial space is generally discussed, very often it is the perspective of the coloniser and imperialist that is adopted, and in some senses this book is no exception. In focusing on gender, there may be a sense in which we necessarily, even if unintentionally, downplay other perspectives. McEwan asks, ‘Is it possible to recover the agency of white women without simultaneously erasing the agency of colonised peoples’ (McEwan, 2000: 176). One has to ask oneself if it is adequate to simply devote one chapter to indigenous views of spatiality. However, throughout this study I have tried to show that...

  9. 6 Conclusions
    6 Conclusions (pp. 158-172)

    I have been arguing in this book that in order to analyse the relationship between gender and spatial relations within the colonial context, we need to see space as much more than simply, in Massey’s terms, ‘social relations stretched out’ (Massey, 1994). Of course, spatial relations are an embodiment, an enactment and an affirmation of social relations, but within this we must also consider the way that gender interacts with and is constructed through architectural relations, divisions between the public and private sphere, ways of viewing and knowing, aesthetic and racial judgements. Furthermore, what has to be considered is the...

  10. Bibliography
    Bibliography (pp. 173-192)
  11. Index
    Index (pp. 193-200)
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