1143 | 824 | Beyond Postcolonial Thought in Political Geography: Lessons from South Asia Studies

Even a cursory survey of relevant geographical debates on the goods that Postcolonial thought should deliver is disclosing a wide-ranging debate. Many geographers agreed upon the need to reflect the manyfold effects of colonialism on today’s world and its political prospects for the future. Postcolonial thought seemed to create such a critical engagement with colonialism’ after-effects and its construction of knowledge. We read about challenges to inherent assumptions of colonial thought, present in contemporary political geography; about a new conceptual framework for understanding ways in which metropolitan and colonial societies were drawn together; about new explanations of the problems which newly created nation-states have been facing; etc. In brief, the vast area of Postcolonial thought looks as a promising critique of the colonial heritage in geography (and many other disciplines). There is also a considerable amount of criticism, ranging from remarks to particular historical questions to claims about principal impossibility of the project. This paper will focus on interactions between South Asia Studies and Postcolonial thought in order to formulate preliminary answers to the following questions: What exactly did the postcolonial theorizing address in problems concerning political geography? What new problems, relevant to the field, were formulated, and how were they solved? In other words, did the postcolonial thought bring about the changes political geographers wanted to see in the field?

Martin Fárek
Department of Geography, Faculty of Science, Humanities and Education, Technical University of Liberec, Czech Republic

ID Abstract: 824