Spatial Imaginings in the Age of Colonial Cartographic Reason - 9780367430184

Taylor & Francis

Spatial Imaginings in the Age of Colonial Cartographic ReasonMaps, Landscapes, Travelogues in Britain and India\nAuthor(s): Nilanjana Mukherjee\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd, United Kingdom\nImprint: Routledge India\nISBN-13: 9780367430184, 978-0367430184\nSynopsis\nThis volume explores how India as a geographical space was constructed by the British colonial regime in visual and material terms. It demonstrates the instrumentalisation of cultural artefacts such as landscape paintings, travel literature and cartography, as spatial practices overtly carrying scientific truth claims, to materially produce artificial spaces that reinforced power relations. It sheds light on the primary dominance of cartographic reason in the age of European Enlightenment which framed aesthetic and scientific modes of representation and imagination. The author cross-examines this imperial gaze as a visual perspective which bore the material inscriptions of a will to assert, posses.