ABSTRACT
My aims in this article are to analyse the gendered nature of colonial space and to begin framework for a materialist-feminist postcolonial practice.1 I will be drawing on theoretical work on gender and space which has been developed pri marily by feminist geographers and anthropologists, and I will read this critical work through/against some of the theoretical material developed within postco lonial literary and cultural theory. I will attempt this fusion in order to analyse spatial relations without relying solely on the psychoanalytical models devel oped within postcolonial cultural theory which polarise and essentialise gender and racial divisions. The article thus begins with an examination of the possibil ity of developing a more materialist postcolonial theory/practice. I then critically examine the theoretical work which has been undertaken on space and gender, which generally considers the confinement of women to be the determining factor in women’s sense of their position within spatial frameworks. I argue that the complexity of gendered spatial relations, particularly within the colonial context, cannot be encompassed within the notion of confinement. I then move to an analysis of the importance of viewing position for the construction of gen dered spatial relations. Finally, I consider two levels of colonial space, the ideal ised level of distance and separation embodied within colonial architecture and town planning, and the ‘contact zone’ of sexualised colonial space. (Pratt, 1992). In this way, by being critical of the reductiveness of much psychoanalyt ical postcolonial theory, I hope to produce an analytical framework within
which it is possible to make general statements about the gendered nature of colonial space, at the same time as being aware of the material specificity of dif ferent colonial contexts. Throughout this discussion I will examine briefly a number of primary texts written within different colonial contexts; my main focus of attention will be on India in the late nineteenth century.2
