Spatialising Politics: Culture and Geography in Postcolonial Sri LankaCatherine Brun, Tariq Jazeel Spatialising Politics: Culture and Geography in Postcolonial Sri Lanka brings together essays on the theme of spatial politics of Sri Lanka. Space is an important factor in the ongoing ethnic conflict fuelling Sri Lanka's continuing civil war. Claims and contestations over the integrity of island space and the control of northern and eastern territories are central to the violently contested dispute. The editors view space from a different perspective. They argue that space is important through a number of registers less frequently invoked in dominant approaches to understanding postcolonial Sri Lankan nationhood, identity and difference. The book examines and historicizes the role of spatialities often occluded within the debates on Sri Lankan politics such as, cities and built-space, diasporic productions and imaginations, commodity cultures and their concordant networks, knowledge spaces and 'foreign' intervention, landscape and sacred space, as well as geographical knowledge. Situated at the intersection of human geography and postcolonial studies, the book signals the ways that postcolonialism and geography are intimately linked and how their intersections evoke the social, spatial and political effects of enduring colonial discourse and representation. In developing its argument, Spatialising Politics also gestures towards alternative spatial imaginations, possibilities and representations, at a time when spaces for alternative discourses on Sri Lankan politics are fast shrinking. |
Contents
Spatial Politics and Postcolonial Sri Lanka | 1 |
The Imagined Spaces of Empire | 15 |
Nira Wickramasinghe | 24 |
Copyright | |
9 other sections not shown
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administrative areas argues attempt authority became become bodies boundaries British building central centre century Ceylon chapter civil claims coffee Colombo colonial concern connections construction continued created critical cultural discourse east economic Eelam effect emerging Empire engage ethnic example experience fact forces foreign geography groups houses human idea identity imagination important India institutions interests island Jaffna Jeganathan knowledge labour land landscape lives London LTTE material movement Muslim nationalist nature noted organisations particular parties peace period plantations political population position postcolonial practices present Press production Province question reference region relations relationship relatively role rural sense significant Sinhala Sinhalese social society South space spatial Sri Lanka structures struggle Studies suggests Tamil territory understanding University village violence Western write