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Conclusion
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Conclusion Reflections on space, whether explicit or implied, permeate any study of colonialism and its postcolonial contestations. All major figures of postcolonial theory have in one way or another raised the question of postcolonial spatiality in terms of colonial domination, postcolonial independence, and nation building, or the place of the “Third World” in contemporary global politics. In a recent attempt to reinvigorate the term postcolonial, burdened, in my view, by the unproductive repetition of its binary problematics as well as its “interstitial” solutions, Ato Quayson proposes, for example, that “closer scrutiny of the postcolonial suggests that it contains mutually reinforcing periodizing and spatial functions” (342, original emphasis). Quayson reminds us, very much in the spirit of Clive Barnett’s or Maeve McCusker’s focus on the prevalence of spatial concepts in postcolonial studies (see my introduction ), that the concept of space structures postcolonial discourses in a dynamic way and is as important to the internal organization of the field as the more common idea of postcolonial periodicity. The obvious contemporary penchant for rediscovering space wherever it can be found attests to its perpetually nascent popularity and to the genuine discursive and experiential importance of space. Nevertheless there is not enough explicit discussion of the mutually constitutive relations between space and identity in those places where the right to spatial and communal autonomy has historically been denied and has thus become the locus of a struggle for reappropriation. Even less has been thought, as Neil Smith and Cindi Katz write, about space as a metaphor—an imaginative and transformative category of fragile literary and artistic interventions within the realm of solid material concerns.1 While I, along with many other postcolonial scholars, recognize that spatial thinking is generally relevant for postcolonial analysis, I seek to show that Caribbean 182 Conclusion postcolonial literature in particular relies on representations of space as its central strategy in formulating the specificity of the region. My aim in this book has been to address two related questions: What exactly constitutes spatial identity in Caribbean postcolonial literature? What is the transformative potential of spatial thinking when it is mobilized as a metaphor in postcolonial literature? I connect these two questions in the following way. Colonial domination alienates the colonized and enslaved peoples from the spaces they inhabit but do not own. Yet more important, it also alienates them from a meaningful sense of identity, both individual and communal. The two categories, space and self, thus become interchangeable; the absence of autonomous location results in the absence of autonomous identity. Dispossessed of place, the colonial subjects find themselves searching for a viable form of selfhood divorced from the notion of material ownership yet still connected to the space they inhabit. The result is the production of an alternative spatiality that rests on something other than material ownership of space. This alternative spatiality is constructed as symbolic; through daily, mostly communal use of space, the dispossessed lay claim to what is otherwise taken from them in material terms. It is here that space-as-metaphor becomes a powerful statement of resistance: space is no longer the subject of material property but rather of symbolic appropriation. The perpetually fluctuating binary of destitution and substitution thus organizes my reading of space in Caribbean postcolonial discourse and unfolds a series of other binary oppositions and paradoxes that emanate from it. I argue that the reliance on the metaphor of space, rather than the reflection on space as such, produces an act of substitution. Time and again this substitution of an image for the thing emphasizes the reality of destitution, which underlies and motivates the imaginative act. In other words, the metaphor of space in the Caribbean context highlights the contested nature of postcolonial space, its historical unavailability, and the fact that claiming space remains a luxury most people do not have. It is precisely this denial of space—drawn into sharper focus by the proliferation of spatial images—that I examine by looking at the spatial concerns of Caribbean literature. Conversely, the absence of a legitimate location, so central to postcolonial reflections on space, triggers the proliferation of spatial images as imaginary substitutes for that absence of material location denied by the history of colonial destitution. In other words, the metaphor of space points not to space as such, but, as Lefebvre rightly observes, to the very absence of space. Because I am interested in the particular manner in which Caribbean authors interrogate this [3.131.110.169] Project MUSE (2024-04...