Tijana Parezanović
Other Spaces of the Empire
Číslo: 1/2016
Periodikum: Prague Journal of English Studies
Klíčová slova: Hotel; heterotopia; Troubles; big house novel; British Empire; dislocation; liminality; centre/periphery
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Anotace:
Focusing on the hotel imagery and, more precisely, the hotel Majestic featured in J.G.
Farrell’s 1970 novel Troubles, this article provides a spatial contextualization of the
historical downfall of the British Empire. In an attempt to establish the concept of
the “colonial hotel”, this particular type of hotel is theorized as a fi ctional means of
questioning the sustainability of the imperial project of colonialism. e theoretical
framework for considerations of the Majestic in Troubles as a representative of the
“colonial hotel” concept is based on Foucault’s heterotopology, as well as on the concepts
of liminality and dislocation taken from postcolonial studies. Reading Troubles as an
allegory of the Troubles in Ireland and, more broadly, a symptom of the disintegration of
the British Empire, the article shows that the hotel, modelled a er the historical concept
of the Anglo-Irish big house, provides a proper setting where the deconstruction of the
binary oppositions of colonial discourse can be played out. While the Majestic represents
a mirror-image of the imperial centre, or rather a dislocated centre, its destruction is
brought about by its tendency towards constancy and perpetuation of the illusion of
grandeur. Similarly, the British Empire refuses to acknowledge the socio-political and
historical changes of the early twentieth century and denies the existence of interstitial
spaces between its fi rmly defi ned structures, whereby it inevitably meets its end.
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Farrell’s 1970 novel Troubles, this article provides a spatial contextualization of the
historical downfall of the British Empire. In an attempt to establish the concept of
the “colonial hotel”, this particular type of hotel is theorized as a fi ctional means of
questioning the sustainability of the imperial project of colonialism. e theoretical
framework for considerations of the Majestic in Troubles as a representative of the
“colonial hotel” concept is based on Foucault’s heterotopology, as well as on the concepts
of liminality and dislocation taken from postcolonial studies. Reading Troubles as an
allegory of the Troubles in Ireland and, more broadly, a symptom of the disintegration of
the British Empire, the article shows that the hotel, modelled a er the historical concept
of the Anglo-Irish big house, provides a proper setting where the deconstruction of the
binary oppositions of colonial discourse can be played out. While the Majestic represents
a mirror-image of the imperial centre, or rather a dislocated centre, its destruction is
brought about by its tendency towards constancy and perpetuation of the illusion of
grandeur. Similarly, the British Empire refuses to acknowledge the socio-political and
historical changes of the early twentieth century and denies the existence of interstitial
spaces between its fi rmly defi ned structures, whereby it inevitably meets its end.