Postcolonial geographies, decolonization, and the performance of geopolitics at Commonwealth conferences
Postcolonial geographies, decolonization, and the performance of geopolitics at Commonwealth conferences
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DOI：
10.1111/sjtg.12050
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发表时间：
2014-03
影响因子：
2.2
通讯作者：
R. Craggs
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
R. Craggs
后殖民地理学的研究忽视了政治非殖民化的时期、实践和空间，而倾向于研究高度帝国主义和正在进行的当代殖民主义。在这里，我建议地理学家们应该更仔细地研究一下世纪中期，在这个时期，人们、机构和国家进行了谈判、表演，并经历了后殖民时代。我把重点放在现代英联邦，从大英帝国的结束，特别是在20世纪70年代的两个英联邦政府首脑会议出现的情况。在这个时候，英联邦是一个重要的网站排练反殖民，反英国和后殖民政治身份，为争夺英国在南部非洲的政策和干预正在进行的非殖民化。本文作出了三个更广泛的贡献。第一，它突出表明，必须掌握非殖民化所产生的机构的特点，并认真对待这一时期，至少是政治精英所经历的时期，这一时期是一个巨大变化的时期，其特点是令人兴奋的机会以及不确定性和挫折感。其次，它通过提请注意国际会议作为地缘政治事件来扩大地缘政治空间和行动的概念化，通过这些事件，政治立场和身份得以上演和表现。第三，它有助于（并复杂化）后殖民地缘政治中的下级概念。
Research in postcolonial geography has overlooked the period, practices and spaces of political decolonization in favour of studies of high imperialism and ongoing contemporary colonialism. Here, I suggest geographers should look more carefully at the mid-twentieth century era during which people, institutions and states negotiated, performed and experienced becoming postcolonial. I make this case by focusing on the modern Commonwealth which emerged from the end of the British Empire, and specifically, on two Commonwealth Heads of Government Meetings in the 1970s. At this time the Commonwealth was an important site for rehearsing anticolonial, anti-British and postcolonial political identities, for contesting British policies in Southern Africa and intervening in ongoing decolonization. The paper makes three broader contributions. First, it highlights the need to grasp the specificities of institutions arising from decolonization, and to take this period seriously as one that was experienced, at least by political elites, as one of dramatic change, characterized by exciting opportunities as well as uncertainty and frustration. Second, it broadens conceptualizations of geopolitical space and action by drawing attention to international conferences as geopolitical events through which political positions and identities were staged and performed. Third, it contributes to (and complicates) notions of the subaltern within postcolonial geopolitics.