SOAS LITERARY REVIEW (3), Spring 2002

Contents

Introduction

This issue of SOAS Literary Review is based on a selection of papers presented at a postgraduate conference held at SOAS on 13-14 September 1999 entitled 'Textual Space: the Geographies of Modern Literatures in Africa, Asia and the Middle East'.

The intention was to group together these literatures in a context that would lead us to consider the relation of geography to literature and debate what might be meant by the term 'literary geography'. This term, used by Franco Moretti in his Atlas of the European Novel 1800-1900 (1998) opens up rich possibilities for the investigation of space as a category in literary analysis.

The concept of 'space' and its relation to literature has generally been considered in abstract or external terms; abstract, as in postcolonial discourse, which whilst being informed by its awareness of the geopolitical division of the globe has focused primarily on such notions as 'centre' and 'periphery'; external in the sense that 'space' or 'social space' has been for the most part seen as a 'given' within which literary production is carried out and which therefore determines it. Whilst not wishing to argue that social space does not determine literary production, this conference intended to look at the spaces within the literary text in order to appreciate 'literary geography' as a process through which social agents construct and contest their sense of place.

Not only does literature help to consolidate particular senses of place but it also helps to challenge established notions of space and articulates new ones. In an institution like SOAS it is almost impossible not to be aware of the impact of space upon our thinking. It provides a concrete example of the relations between space and cultural or intellectual production. The structure of the languages and cultures departments, hived off as they are from each other, makes cross-regional research difficult and 'classifies' cultural production according to certain prevailing notions of global space - South Asia, Africa, Middle East, East and South East Asia. The idea for the conference emerged out of an attempt by a group of literature research students to bridge these disparate and institutionalized spaces. Only in so doing did we become aware that it was the institutional space of SOAS itself that narrowed our vision within delimited and permissible boundaries, thereby circumscribing cross-regional dialogue and debate.

Moreover, it is significant that it was literature students who made this break. At the time of the conference literature at SOAS was a discipline without an abode, no department to call ‘home’, and thus, like all itinerants, we found ourselves comparing and contrasting our homelessness, as it were, with others, questioning their homeliness in the process. Since then, the AHRB Centre for the Study of the Literatures of Asia and Africa was established at SOAS jointly with UCL in part to address this issue. The positive response to our call for papers confirmed that there was indeed interest in addressing such questions. To discover so many research students engaged in this field was promising. However it is also noteworthy that interest seemed to be accentuated amongst those studying the literatures of Africa and the Middle East. There were far fewer submissions from those engaged with South Asia and none at all from East and South East Asia.

'Textual Space' proved to be a highly successful conference attended by over 60 delegates from 10 countries, with papers delivered by research students from a number of institutions across the UK and Europe. Papers were grouped in panels that were organised thematically around the various representations of space in modern literatures: 'Lines of Control', 'Exile and Diaspora', 'Sites of Expression' and 'Imaging the Land'. One of the highlights of the conference was a session that brought together four internationally renowned novelists - Romesh Gunusekera, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Hanan al-Shaykh and Yvonne Vera who read from their work. It emerged during the conference that one way to expand on the idea of 'textual space' in interdisciplinary terms would be to address the work of geographers that engages with literary texts.

We would like to thank the people who agreed to put their papers forward for publication in this special issue of SOAS Literary Review. We feel that this selection is representative of the range of ideas that were generated by the conference. Alexander Moore challenges the simplistic adaptation of spatial analysis in much of postcolonial studies, arguing for a return to its basis in philosophy and geography. Moore is not arguing against the overlapping of disciplines, but rather calls for a greater specificity in what we mean by 'space'.

Taking the theme of the conference as a starting point, he examines, through the works of Homi Bhabha and Edward Said, the deployment of space as a critical category Controversially, the fiction of Amos Tutuola is seen as spanning the problematic and contrived gap between pre-colonial oral and post-colonial literary cultures in Africa. In his analysis of Tutuola's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, David Whittaker addresses this issue by tracing the influences on Tutuola's writing and reassessing its relevance within contemporary debates of liminality and identity. With reference to two Indian novels, Seth's A Suitable Boy and Renu's Hindi novel, Maila anchal, Angela Atkins writes on the representation of agrarian space during the upheaval caused by the land reforms of the early 1950s. Her examination explores the effect of narrative form and readership on the depictions of rural north India.