Postcolonial geographies

From Geography

The postcolonial geographical approach has become more important in geography over the past decades. Postcolonial geography can be typified as anti-colonial. Post-colonial geographies try to explore the impact of colonialism in the past and the present. The post-colonial geographies are not only about the past forms of colonialistic power, but also current colonialistic forms of power are analysed with the post-colonial perspective. 'Postcolonial critiques stress the need to destabilise what might be taken for granted and assumed in our cultures, traditions and contexts' (Gregory, 2000, p. 168).

As with cultural geography, the boundaries of what counts as postcolonialism are also fluid. There are obvious crosscurrents between cultural geography, postcolonial studies and other work on cultural identities, processes, practices, politics and social divisions (Nash, 2002). Postcolianism asks for a fluid approach, rather than fixed truths or meanings. Also modern forms of colonialism are critizised by the postcolonialist.

The term post in postcolonialism has to different explenations. It could be seen as the periode after the colonialism has starterd. The whole period of colonialism is included in the postcolonian period. Mostly, the term refers to the period after colonialism has ended. THe explaination the term in this entrie refers to the second one.

An important concept in postcolonialsm is representation. Representations can be images, material reproductions and simulations. Representation can also be defined as the act of placing or stating facts in order to influence or affect the action of others (Baldonado, 1996). In postcolonialism, representation is about the view people in the western countries have of the colonies, and the view people in the colonies have of the western countries.

References:

Gregory, D. (2000). Decolonising Geography: Postcolonial Perspectives Chapter 5 in: Blunt, A. & Wills, J. (eds.) Dissident Geographies: An introduction to radical Ideas and Practice. Prentice Hall, London

Nash, C. (2002. Cultural geography: postcolonial cultural geographies. Progress in Human Geography 26,2 (2002) pp. 219–230

Baldano (1996) Representation, found on 26 October 2012 on http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Representation.html

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