Thinking through the idea of ‘after empire’ one

is automatically drawn to the extensive body

of thought that, in the last two decades of the

twentieth century, came into being under the

rubric of postcolonial theory. In the obvious

sense, ‘post colonial’ simply means ‘after the

colonial’ and, until the early 1980s, was used ‘to

describe a condition referring to peoples, states

and societies that have been through a process of

formal decolonization’ (Sidaway, 2000: 594). In

the flurry of literature since that time, the scope

of the term has widened. In 1990, Robert Young

suggested that the analysis of colonial discourse

‘itself forms the point of questioning Western

knowledge’s categories and assumptions’

(1990: 11); it demanded, in Mongia’s words, ‘a

rethinking of the very terms by which knowledge

has been constructed’ (1995: 2).

These claims are reflected across the disci-

plines, including geography. Thus, Gregory

views postcolonialism as ‘a critical politico-

intellectual formation that is centrally concerned

with the impact of colonialism and its contesta-

tion on the cultures of both colonizing and

colonized peoples in the past, and the reproduc-

tion and transformation of colonial relations,

representations and practices in the present’

(2000: 612). As ‘there have been many colo-

nialisms’, the ‘post’ brings into consciousness

especially those of the sixteenth to the twentieth

centuries ‘in such a way that our understanding

of the present is transformed’ (2000: 612).

Postcolonial approaches, according to Sidaway,

in some accounts ‘aim to transcend the cultural

and broader ideological legacies and presences

of imperialism’ [sic] (2000: 594). Does this hint

at an intellectual (or social) revolution from

below?

In these conceptualizations, both Gregory

and Sidaway implicitly connect a longer tradi-

tion of critical writings on colonialism with

work more recently established as ‘postcolonial

studies’ (Loomba, 1998: xv). Given the prolif-

eration of valuable accounts of postcolonial

studies at the turn of the millennium, by both

geographers and others (Ashcroft, 2001;

Gregory, 2000; Loomba, 1998; Robinson,

1999; Sidaway, 2000; Yeoh, 2001; Young,

2001) my first aim will be to address certain

key issues which, because of the failure to com-

bine insights from different disciplines, have

been neglected. Moreover, recognizing the need

for postcolonial theory to engage with ‘material

practices, actual spaces and real politics’

(Yeoh, 2001: 457; see also Barnett, 1997;

Loomba, 1998: 94) rather than simply analyses

of representation and discourse, I also take up

Driver’s suggestion to explore the ‘relatively

unexamined ... role of space in a whole variety

of modern aesthetic, cultural and political dis-

courses beyond a narrow definition of social

theory’ (1992: 25), though particularly in rela-

tion to architecture, urban form and built and

spatial environments, not least as these are crit-

ically impacted by such socially constructed

notions as ‘the tropics’ as a climatic and natural

environment. To do this adequately, attention

must be paid to postcolonial studies and para-

digm(s), undertaken prior to the publication of

Edward Said’s Orientalism(1978), frequently

taken as the starting point of the current phase

of postcolonial studies (for example, Ashcroft,

2001; Ashcroft et al., 1998; Loomba, 1998;

Williams and Chrisman, 1994)^1.

The chapter also addresses perhaps the most

neglected question in the literature, namely:

20

Cultures and Spaces of Postcolonial Knowledges

Anthony D. King

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