The Discomforts of Distance: Post-Colonialism and South African Geography

Since the early 1980s, the intellectual decolonization of South African geography has wrought major changes in the practices, rhetoric and self–image of the dlscipline .One practleal result of this quest for a postcolonial geography has been a weakening of lines of contact and influence with the heartlands of geographical enterprise. Recently, geographers in the metropole have begun to engage with the fundamental challenge of postcolonial scholarship. This paper attempts to prepare the ground for a rapprochement between South African geography and postcolonialism. It argues that the recene history of South African intellectual life (includmg that of many geographers) provides an exemplary case of the struggle to construct a postcolonial knowledge. On the other hand, postcolonialism challenges South African geography to push the project of decolonization still further in the future.