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Landscape and the mask of self in George Orwell's ‘Shooting an elephant’
Author(s) -
Tyner James A
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
area
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.958
H-Index - 82
eISSN - 1475-4762
pISSN - 0004-0894
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-4762.2005.00629.x
Subject(s) - subjectivity , george (robot) , colonialism , constitution , humanity , sociology , aesthetics , history , literature , environmental ethics , art , art history , philosophy , epistemology , law , archaeology , political science
Recent work in geography has focused attention on the imbrication of landscape and literature. A dominant thread of these ‘fictive geographies’ has been a concern with how imagined landscapes contribute to the constitution of self. Informed especially by post‐structuralism and post‐colonialism, geographers have recently provided critical readings of novels, short stories and essays. In this paper I provide a reading of George Orwell's essay ‘Shooting an elephant’. The writings of Orwell reveal a long‐standing engagement with issues of humanity and subjectivity, and I contend that this essay, rather than a straightforward polemic against British imperialism, reveals a concern primarily with the constitution of self within a colonial landscape. Orwell's essay thus provides insight into the processes whereby human subjectivities interact with space and structures.