# Jean-Jacques Chardin, Gwendolyne Cressman et Fanny Moghaddassi (éds), Territory | Territoire(s), Ranam (Recherches anglaises et nord-américaines) n° 57

Louise McCarthy

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OpenEdition
Journals

**Electronic version**

URL: https://journals.openedition.org/interfaces/8613

DOI: 10.4000/122dw

ISSN: 2647-6754

**Publisher:**

Université Paris Cité, Université Bourgogne Europe, College of the Holy Cross

**Electronic reference**

Louise McCarthy, "Jean-Jacques Chardin, Gwendolyne Cressman et Fanny Moghaddassi (éds), Territory | Territoire(s), Ranam (Recherches anglaises et nord-américaines) n° 57", *Interfaces* [Online], 51 | 2024, Online since 30 June 2024, connection on 28 August 2025. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/interfaces/8613 ; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/122dw

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Jean-Jacques Chardin, Gwendolyne Cressman et Fanny Moghaddassi (éds), Territory | Territoire(s), Ranam (Recherches anglaises et nord-américaines) n° 57

Louise McCarthy

REFERENCES

Jean-Jacques Chardin, Gwendolyne Cressman et Fanny Moghaddassi (éds), Territory | Territoire(s), *Ranam* (Recherches anglaises et nord-américaines) n° 57, Presses universitaires de Strasbourg, 2023. EAN : 9791034401697

1. This bilingual volume examines the notion of “territory” from different vantage points, bringing together a variety of contributions from diverse fields, with a majority of articles focusing on contemporary literary material from North America. In that sense, *Territory/Territoire(s)* reflects current efforts in academia to transcend disciplinary boundaries and holds true to the promise of pluri-disciplinarity formulated in the preface. The contributors to this volume have set out to draw the conceptual boundaries of “territory” and explore the multiple ways in which this notion may inform our understanding of certain literary productions, historical events, and socio-geographical realities, from the 16th century to the present day. They grapple with the semantic multivalence of the term, measure its representational weight, and dissect its political implications across parts of the anglophone world.

2. Most of the contributions to this volume agree on the artificial, discursive, and sometimes rhetorical nature of “territory” which is understood as a space invested with socio-political meaning. Even maps (reviewed in the fourth article) and legal
documents (mentioned in the fifth article) which rely on a seemingly objective idea of territory, also emerge as pieces of discourse contingent on a specific worldview. With its various attempts at circumscribing “territory” and associated notions, the volume is a reminder of the difficulty of navigating the complex semantic ramifications of the term, from its literal definitions to its innumerable figurative meanings. Metaphorical uses of “territory” and “map” can prove productive, as in Lianne Habinek’s article, for example, where the body is a form of “historical map” (p. 51) with scars and wounds emerging as visible landmarks. However, they also pose the risk of further complicating the volume’s task of disentangling the meanings of “territory”. In addition, *Territory/Territoire(s)* occasionally raises the question of what “territorialisation” entails as a process. Most articles help the reader understand how non-territorial entities (like bodies, discussed by Raman and Habinek) and spaces (an almost uninhabited and unclaimed location such as the children’s cove, in Letessier’s article) have become territorialised through certain creative operations. The reverse process of “de-territorialisation”, though briefly mentioned in the last two articles (respectively by Letessier, and Lajarge and Sadoux), remains slightly unclear and elusive on a conceptual level.

3 The volume starts with a preface by Jean-Jacques Chardin and takes us through three main areas of study: “Territories and Identities” (containing 3 articles), “Dividing, Reclaiming, Gendering Territory” (4 articles), and “Territory-Territories: A Fresh Approach” (1 article).

4 The first section reviews examples from early modern English literature, especially drama. This section approaches territory from the angle of identities as entities situated in space, scrutinising territorial forms as diverse as imaginary islands (Monica Matei-Chesnoiu), metatheatrical spaces (Shankar Raman) and wounded bodies (Lianne Habinek). These contributions draw attention to the symbolic value of certain literary locations (Matei-Chesnoiu) and to the ways in which bodies were spatialised and invested with territorial value in Shakespearean drama and modern screen adaptations (Raman and Habinek). They mostly examine matters of identity and belonging, and how they connect to real or imaginative territories featured in early modern drama. Shankar Raman’s article (“Checking IDs in *The Tempest*”) and Lianne Habinek’s contribution (“‘Th’unaching scars which I should hide’: The Monstrous War-Machine in *Coriolanus*”) specifically have to do with the elusiveness and instability of territorialised bodies – that is, bodies which are viewed as spaces defined by identity, but whose identity is conversely defined by spaces. In line with other recent works on matters of identity in the early modern era, Raman and Habinek remind us of the importance of surface and appearance to determine selfhood and belonging. Bodily features (such as scars) and other external signs (like clothing) are studied as aspects meant to define the bounds of one’s identity, often performing a metonymic function. Yet, the focus of those contributions is on the anxieties surrounding the likely illegibility and misinterpretations of sartorial and corporeal signs however straightforward, reliable, and stable one might have assumed those to be.

5 Although this first section primarily deals with the intersection between spaces and the self, and how this produces meaningful and unstable territorialities, Raman and Habinek also pay attention to how spaces of drama are also affected by territoriality and its ambiguities. Dramatic spaces, due to their anamorphic potential, fit uneasily in traditional territorial categories but facilitate a reassessment of the symbolic and
political value of settings and locations in Shakespearean drama. Both Raman and Habinek's discussions of early modern theatrical material also invite us to consider what lies beyond the fourth wall, drawing attention to extra layers of territoriality created by what Habinek terms the "extra-spatial viewing" experience of play-going or movie-going – that is, the spaces which lie beyond the bounds of the stage or screen, from which an audience enjoys a privileged perspective on the plot, its territorialised characters and locations.

6 With the exception of the first contribution which takes its distances from decolonial and postcolonial approaches to early modern material, the articles in *Territory/Territoire(s)* echo contemporary efforts to change scholarly perspectives on early colonial history and its legacy. Shankar Raman, for example, finds some of the decolonial readings of *The Tempest* productive, drawing parallels between Shakespeare's theatrical territories and conceptions of territory in the context of England's early imperial endeavours which were contemporary to Shakespeare. This brief incursion into colonial history and historiography is developed in more detail in the second section of the volume.

7 The plasticity of territory examined in the first section helps us understand how it may also be the site for conflict and the likely object of cultural reconfigurations, which are studied in the following section. In this second part territory emerges as a specific by-product of Europe's history of colonisation in North America, lying at the core of symbolic and physical conflicts between colonists and indigenous people. Territory is understood here as a political product of European expansionist rhetoric and practice which shaped legitimising discourse about space, ownership, and authority, but also structured power dynamics.

8 In tune with recent efforts to change the perspective on early European imperialism, what the contributions of Trouillet, Coulouma, Boisgerault, and Letessier explore is the view of the colonised and the experiences of loss, trauma, and confusion resulting from the destructive effects of colonial territorialisation in North America. Instead of narrowly focusing on European definitions and experiences (as most literature still does in discussions of imperial history), contributors shed light on recent imaginative and conceptual reappropriations of territory in both creative and scholarly spheres. These contributions do not embrace the Eurocentric perspective provided by the illustrative world map on the title page of the present volume. Rather, they examine how maps and texts can challenge hegemonic views of territory, foregrounding North American indigenous worldviews and discourse. Agnès Trouillet's article ("'Chikhansink': cartographie européenne et contre-cartographie amérindienne dans la vallée du Delaware au XVIIe siècle") engages most directly with territory in the literal and traditional sense of the term. It examines indigenous "counter-cartographies" in 17th-century Delaware, following the now canonical framework of critical cartography pioneered by John Brian Harley who called for maps to be read as discursive and rhetorical texts, rather than passively viewed as transparent, objective, and scientific reflections of the world. Using G. Malcolm Lewis' work on native North American mapmaking (in David Woodward and G. Malcolm Lewis' *History of Cartography*, vol. 2, book 3, chapter 4) as a stepping stone, she concentrates on a specific case study (the Lenape people) and sheds light on the ruptures and continuities at work in mapping mutating territories through the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.
9 In the following article (“Territory, Sovereignty, and the Law: Defining Indian Country in Louise Erdrich’s Fiction”), Flore Coulouma looks at the legacy of this initial representational conflict. She concentrates on what happens after dispossession, and on the legal as well as literary means used to reclaim stolen land, power, and dignity. The next two articles, “‘The gaping cut in the wire’: Transvaluing and Transgressing the Territory in Leslie Marmon Silko’s *Ceremony*” by Pauline Boisgerault and “Precarious Territorializing, Contingent Territories in Michael Crummey’s *The Innocents* (2019)” by Anne-Sophie Letessier, also illuminate the processes of subversion of those historically dominant understandings of territory. They specifically focus on literary works which appropriate and redefine the notion of territory and its associated tropes (such as the captivity narrative or the rugged beauty of the “untamed” American wild). In the final article of this section, Letessier studies the overlapping macro- and micro-territories of a novel featuring two orphans confined to a cove in Newfoundland. Building on thorough close readings of selected passages, she offers yet another approach to territory theretofore primarily defined in political terms, turning the discussion away from representational and political concerns towards a more empirical and emotional understanding informed by phenomenology.

10 The final part of the volume consists of a collaborative article by Romain Lajarge and Stéphane Sadoux entitled “La libération territoriale. Pistes pour les sciences territoriales, l’urbanisme et l’architecture”, discussing contemporary ways of producing territory at different levels from a geographical perspective, thereby further widening the scope of this volume’s multi-disciplinary ambitions. Taking the treaties of the Peace of Westphalia (1648) and the genesis of the modern European nation-state as a starting point, the two authors advocate for a closer connection between scholarly enquiry, urban planning, and pragmatic concerns about inhabiting space. With its pleas for a more local and democratic approach to territorialisation, the text calls for a re-scaling and rethinking of territory in a fairer way.

11 Overall, this volume argues for the malleable and anamorphic nature of territory against any received assumptions about its fixity and definiteness as found in European colonial discourse and mappings. The volume's main hermeneutical strength is the range of its source material, methodological approaches, and conceptual tools. It is an invitation to think critically about notions which may initially seem straightforward and strictly geo-political in nature. *Territory/Territoire(s)* is mostly successful in reassessing diverse works which map, un-map, or re-map real spaces and spaces of the imagination. The volume thus participates in a wider effort to re-centre what imperial and colonial European conceptions of territory had tended to marginalise and erase not only on maps, but also in public discourse and the arts.
# AUTHORS

## LOUISE MCCARTHY

Université Paris-Cité. Louise McCarthy est agrégée d'anglais et doctorante à l'Université Paris Cité où elle enseigne et travaille sous la direction du Professeur Ladan Niayesh. Sa thèse en histoire littéraire et cartographie de la première modernité s'intitule « Visions d'abondance: la cartographie de propagande des Compagnies de la Virginie et des Indes Orientales (1600-1626) ».