The aesthetic terrain of settler colonialism: Katherine Mansfield and Anton Chekhov’s natives

Gould, Rebecca Ruth

Abstract

While Anton Chekhov’s influence on Katherine Mansfield is widely acknowledged, the two writers’ settler colonial aesthetics have not been brought into systematic comparison. Yet Chekhov’s chronicle of Sakhalin Island in the Russian Far East parallels in important ways Mansfield’s near-contemporaneous account of colonial life in New Zealand. Both writers were concerned with a specific variant of the colonial situation: settler colonialism, which prioritises appropriation of land over the governance of peoples. This essay considers the aesthetic strategies each writer developed for capturing that milieu in their travel writings within the framework of the settler colonial aesthetics that has guided much anthropological engagement with endangered peoples.

Citation

Gould, R. R. (2019). The aesthetic terrain of settler colonialism: Katherine Mansfield and Anton Chekhov’s natives. Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 55(1), 48-65. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449855.2018.1511242

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jan 1, 2018
• Online Publication Date: Oct 4, 2018
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2019
• Deposit Date: Oct 10, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 10, 2023
• Journal: Journal of Postcolonial Writing
• Print ISSN: 1744-9855
• Electronic ISSN: 1744-9863
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis Group
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 55
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 48-65
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17449855.2018.1511242
• Keywords: Settler colonialism, Sakhalin, New Zealand, Siberia, Maori, Gilyak, Russian Empire