Impure and Worldly Geography

Tropicality is a centuries-old Western discourse that treats otherness and the exotic in binary â âusâ and âthemâ â terms. It has long been implicated in empire and its anxieties over difference. However little attention has been paid to its twentieth-century genealogy. This book explores this neglected history through the work of Pierre Gourou one of the centuryâs foremost purveyors of what anti-colonial writer Aimà CÃsaire dubbed tropicalitÃ. It explores how Gourouâs interpretations of âthe natureâ of the tropical world and its innate difference from the temperate world were built on the shifting sands of twentieth-century history â empire and freedom modernity and disenchantment war and revolution culture and civilisation and race and development. The book addresses key questions about the location and power of knowledge by focusing on Gourouâs cultivation of the tropics as a romanticised networked and affective domain. The book probes what CÃsaire described as Gourouâs âimpure and worldly geographyâ as a way of opening up interdisciplinary questions of geography ontology epistemology experience and materiality. This book will be of great interest to scholars and students within historical geography history postcolonial studies cultural studies and international relations. . Language: English