The Wretched of the Earth(1968: 37–40), particu-
larly,his representation of the ‘colonial world’ as
being epitomized by the racially and spatially
segregated colonial city: ‘The colonial world is a
world divided into compartments ... of native
quarters and European quarters, of schools for
natives and schools for Europeans, etc.’
This description would seem toprovide both a
clear benchmark from which to examine the
extent to which such one-time divided colonial
cities which fitted this description have been
transformed in the decades since independence,
but also the opportunity for an assessment of
such transformations by postcolonial (and other)
subjects (King, 1976: 282; Yeoh, 2001). However,
as Yeoh, among others, points out, the situation
is far more complex. In addressing criticism of
the postcolonial paradigm, Moore-Gilbert writes,
‘The objection of many (neo-Marxist) critics to
postcolonialism rests on the assumption that
material forms of oppression are the only ones
worth bothering about and that postcolonialism’s
characteristic focus on the cultural or textual lev-
els of the West’s relationship with the “Rest” is a
symptom of its ignorance or inadequate attention
to the “real” dynamics of that relationship’
(1997: 64).
The opposition which Moore-Gilbert suggests
here between the ‘material’ and the cultural or
textual levels of oppression is a false dichotomy
and one resulting from the unfortunate hiatus
between what I have characterized as the earlier,
‘social science’ scholarship on colonialism and
this second ‘humanities’ phase. Most obviously
it is the absence, in the latter, of attention to the
phenomenon/a of material spacewhich allows
Moore-Gilbert not to recognize, or perhaps not
to acknowledge, that material forms of oppres-
sion are also cultural and textual as well as vice
versa. Here, it is not the metaphorical ‘space’
which ‘historians, anthropologists and literary
theorists of colonial discourse’ frequently evoke,
but real, material space that needs attention:
‘many of their works barely touch on the real,
physical consequence of colonialism’s spatial
tactics, or indigenous responses to them’ (Myers,
1999: 27; see also Cairns, 1998).
Myers refers to ‘the vast and growing litera-
ture by geographers engaged in the critical analy-
sis of interrelationships between colonialism,
geography and ‘discourse’ broadly inclusive of
travel writings, map-making and academic repre-
sentations of formerly colonized places’ (1999:
50). An archaeology of geographical knowledges
(Driver, 1992) would map out not only the
critical turning points in the development of
geographical representations, but how such
geographies have been mobilized to countermaterial oppression (for example, Crush, 1994;
Jacobs, 1993; 1996; Jackson and Jacobs, 1996).
In the remainder of this section I draw selectively
on research in these various fields in order to
illustrate some of the different ways in which
studies on the materialityof space (including
issues of land, territoriality, architectural cultures,
the built environment, planning and urban design)
have illuminated issues of identity, subjectivity
and resistance in a variety of contexts.
A broad distinction might be made here
between two types of research and writing. The
most common, ‘critical colonial histories’ use
colonial discourse analysis to interrogate histori-
cal archives in relation to spatial environments,
the objective being to raise political and social
awareness around issues of representation and
equity for the postcolonial present, and including
issues of gender and colonial space (Mills,
1991). Included here is the now extensive body
of scholarship addressed to the analysis and
deconstruction of colonial travel writing, much
of it, from a critical feminist perspective (Blunt,
1994; Blunt and Rose, 1994; Duncan and
Gregory, 1999; Mills, 1991; 1994a and b; Pratt,
1992). The second type addresses contemporary
situations in supposedlypostcolonial states,
focusing on continuing inequities and injustices
based on race, class and other markers of differ-
ence as part of an ongoing cultural politics of
space. Illustrative of this second approach are
case studies explored in Edge of Empire:
Postcolonialism and the City in which Jane
M. Jacobs traces ways in which ‘the cultural pol-
itics of colonialism and postcolonialism continue
to be articulated in the present’ (1996: 10).
Documenting City of London redevelopments in
the 1980s, she demonstrates how the continuity
of discourses over sites seen as ‘the economic
centre of Empire as well as the spiritual and
otherworldly sense of Empire’ were mobilized to
influence subsequent decisions about urban
design. ‘Place,’ she writes, ‘plays an important
role in which memories of empire remain active’
(1996: 40). Addressing the settlement of
Bangladeshis in East London’s Spitalfields, and
highlighting the continuity between colonial and
postcolonial situations, Jacobs writes, ‘Many of
the new labour arrangements of global cities like
London (produced by postcolonial migrations)
quite literally re-work people already categorized
as available for exploitation under colonial
economies’ (1996: 71). In her native Australia,
Jacobs (1998) speaks to a contemporary politics
of space, demonstrating, for example, the inade-
quacy of the ‘paradigmatic imperial technical
instrument of “mapping”’ to establish the authentic
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