Spatial Boundaries, Abounding Spaces

Colonial
expansion and spatial grammar in French-language works from different historical
and national contexts

Colonialism advanced its
project of territorial expansion by changing the very meaning of borders and
space. The colonial project scripted a unipolar spatial discourse that saw the
colonies as an extension of European borders. In his monograph, Mohit Chandna engages
with narrations of spatial conflicts in French and Francophone literature and
film from the nineteenth to the early twenty-first century. In literary works by
Jules Verne, Ananda Devi, and Patrick Chamoiseau, and film by Michael Haneke,
Chandna analyzes the depiction of ever-changing borders and spatial grammar
within the colonial project. In so doing, he also examines the ongoing
resistance to the spatial legacies of colonial practices that act as
omnipresent enforcers of colonial borders. Literature and film become sites
that register colonial spatial paradigms and advance competing narratives that
fracture the dominance of these borders.

Through its analyses Spatial
Boundaries, Abounding Spaces shows that colonialism is not a finished
project relegated to our past. Colonialism is present in the here and now, and
exercises its power through the borders that define us.

Ebook available in Open Access.
This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).

“The
colonial project is far from over and it continues to determine our lives
through the borders that surround us. In order to understand here and now, one
needs to start with there and then.”, Mohit Chandna