Representational Violence of Colonial River Mapping
Deconstructing the Linear Flows of Waterbodies in River of Stories (2022) and All Quiet in Vikaspuri (2015)
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 24214201 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Anandita Saraswat (School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology), Aratrika Das (0009-0000-9297-6534, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Pages | 1-21 |
| Publication date | 2026-10-03 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | South Asian Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0275-9527 • E-ISSN: 2573-9476 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/02759527.2026.2738339 |
| OpenAlex | W7219001179 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 37 |
A renewed attention on water in postcolonial studies questions the anthropocentric reduction of rivers into inert exploitable entities. Expanding the engagement of postcolonial literatures with water, this article focuses on the representational violence of colonial river mapping in the graphic novels River of Stories and All Quiet in Vikaspuri. Graphic novels’ unique semiotic registers and visual techniques unravel the ongoing influence of colonial cartography and offer alternative spaces to map fluvial riverine ecologies. Graphic novels unearth the interlinkages between abstract cartographic illustrations and extractive hydro-infrastructure projects. The article builds upon Dilip da Cunha’s argument of decolonizing the extractive gaze of resource mapping that naturalizes the depiction of rivers in India as flows of water following a fixed channel. The colonial-extractive gaze of maps is juxtaposed with the experiential view of rivers as depicted in the graphic novels. In emphasizing the graphics of submerged zones and the perspectives of people occupying these areas, the analysis foregrounds the interventionist-activist aim of postcolonial critique. In doing so, the article underscores the socio-political dimensions of water, reflected in its fluvial nature, that are often obscured in colonial cartography.
colonial cartography · river mapping · water bodies · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · South Asian Cinema and Culture · Spatial and Cultural Studies
Postcolonialism
Thinking with Water
The Nutmeg's Curse
Imperial Debris
“I didn’t choose water. Water chose me”
Appeal for embracing posthumanist perspectives in Orijit Sen’s The River of Stories
Urban comics and social justice
Modernity, violence and ‘environmentalism of the poor’
Water Enclosure and World-Literature
The Water Wars Novel
Planned Violence
A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None
Hydrocolonial Johannesburg
The Great Derangement
Reading for Water
On Pluviality
Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor
Water in British India
Patterns of Repetition
Visualizing ‘Epistemic Injustice’
Slow Violence and Water Racism in Sarnath Banerjee’s All Quiet in Vikaspuri
Dockside Reading
Framing India's Hydraulic Crisis
Postcolonial Ecologies
Sarnath Banerjee’s All Quiet in Vikaspuri as Text/Image Activism and Cli-Fi
Literature and the Anthropocene
Writing the Adivasi
The Extractive Zone
The Angel of Progress
Fluid Dispossessions
| Highly cited | No |
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