Literature’s Sensuous Geographies: Postcolonial Matters of Place (Geocriticism and Spatial Literary Studies)

Using place studies within a postcolonial context, this study explores the sense-aesthetic dimensions in literature such as smell, sound, etc. that often challenge the rationalizing logic of modernity. Through close readings of writers such as Conrad and Coetzee, Moslund invites scholars to shift focus from discourse analysis to aesthetic analysis. Front Matter....Pages i-xi Introduction....Pages 1-14 Front Matter....Pages 15-15 The Tenor of Place, Language, and Body in Postcolonial Studies....Pages 17-30 Sensuous Empires and Silent Calls of the Earth....Pages 31-44 Postcolonial Aesthetics and the Politics of the Sensible....Pages 45-57 How to Read Place in Literature with the Body: Language as Poiesis-Aisthesis....Pages 59-78 Front Matter....Pages 79-79 Mind, Eye, Body, and Place in J. M. Coetzee’s Dusklands (1974)....Pages 81-95 Silent Geographies in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1902)....Pages 97-114 Nation and Embodied Experiences of the Place World in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958)....Pages 115-134 Karen Blixen’s Out of Africa (1937): Colonial Aesthetic and Decolonial Aisthesis....Pages 135-151 The Settler’s Language and Emplacement in Patrick White’s Voss (1957)....Pages 153-177 Place, Language, and Body in the Caribbean Experience and the Example of Harold Sonny Ladoo’s No Pain Like This Body (1972)....Pages 179-201 Place and Sensuous Geographies in Migration Literature....Pages 203-218 Spatial Transgressions and Migrant Aesthetics in David Dabydeen’s Disappearance (1993)....Pages 219-239 Coda....Pages 241-246 Back Matter....Pages 247-273 "Literature's Sensuous Geographies offers a study of place in postcolonial literature and theory from other than the socio-cultural and political angles that have traditionally dominated the field. Moslund explores "sensuous geographies" (something that has so far been neglected in the study of place in literature) as opening up other than discursive relations to the world - other, non-territorial modes of being-in-the-world. The book develops a sense-aesthetic mode of reading (a "topo-poetics") and in close-readings of Conrad, Blixen, Coetzee and Achebe (among others), Moslund explores dimensions in literature that open up the place world as produced by desubjectified intensities of smell, sound, sight, touch, etc. Sense-aesthetic qualities of literary language are shown in this way as radically challenging the rationalizing logic of modernity (the inner logic of imperialism), at the heart of which Moslund identifies a disciplining of the senses and a reduction of the sensuous openness of reality. With his study of sensuous geographies in literature, Moslund makes a notable shift in the field of postcolonial studies and geocriticism from discourse analysis to aesthetic analysis"-- Provided by publisher Cover -- Contents -- Series Editor's Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Part I: Theories -- 1 The Tenor of Place, Language, and Body in Postcolonial Studies -- 2 Sensuous Empires and Silent Calls of the Earth -- 3 Postcolonial Aesthetics and the Politics of the Sensible -- 4 How to Read Place in Literature with the Body:Language as Poiesis-Aisthesis -- Part II: Analyses -- 5 Mind, Eye, Body, and Place in J.M. Coetzee's Dusklands (1974) -- 6 Silent Geographies in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1902) -- 7 Nation and Embodied Experiences of the Place Worldin Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart (1958) -- 8 Karen Blixen's Out of Africa (1937): Colonial Aesthetic and Decolonial Aisthesis -- 9 The Settler's Language and Emplacement in Patrick White's Voss (1957) -- 10 Place, Language, and Body in the Caribbean Experience and the Example of Harold Sonny Ladoo's No Pain Like This Body (1972) -- 11 Place and Sensuous Geographies in Migration Literature -- 12 Spatial Transgressions and Migrant Aesthetics in David Dabydeen's Disappearance (1993) -- Coda -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index