Culture And Imperialism In Beyond Culture

Time’, ‘space’, ‘place’ are some of the frequently used (sometimes misused) terms in literature, and they have been defined in different ways and from various theoretical perspectives. In the colonial discourse, in particular, the concept ‘place’ was closely related to knowledge and power in so far as the process of mapping the ‘other spaces ‘ was deployed to reproduce dominant world view. While the tenants of imperialism are teleological, its practices have always been geographic. As Edward said argues in Culture and Imperialism:

If there is anything that radically distinguishes the imagination of anti-imperialism, it is the primacy of geographical element. Imperialism after all is an act of geographical violence through which virtually every space in the world is explored, charted, and finally brought under control. For the native, the history of colonial servitude is inaugurated by loss of the locality to the outsider; its geographical identity …show more content…
In other words, far from being neutral, maps are rhetorical texts used to negotiate power relations and maintain hegemonic systems. Both literally and metaphorically, maps were largely deployed to disseminate certain conceptualizations about space, particularly the idea of ‘Africa’ or ‘India’ as bounded, exotic, peripheral, archaic, and timeless.
In “Beyond Culture”, Akil Gupta and Jameson Ferguson further elaborate on the intertwined nature of space and colonialism:
Colonialism…represents the displacement of one form of interconnection by another. This is not to deny that colonialism or an expanding capitalism does indeed have profoundly dislocating effects on existing societies. But, by always foregrounding the spatial distribution of hierarchical power relations, we can better understand the process whereby a space achieves a distinctive identity as a