Fafnir (Jun 2023)
The Critique of Colonial Cartography in N. K. Jemisin’s The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
Abstract
Epic fantasy is well-known for supplying readers with maps of fantastic secondary-world settings. N. K. Jemisin’s The Inheritance Trilogy is an example of an epic fantasy series that might have benefited from a map, but its author specifically chose not to include one. Jemisin has publicly acknowledged her aversion to the fantasy map as little more than a cliché that oftentimes spoils the role that places on the map will have in a fantasy text. Critical descriptions of cartographic images in The Inheritance Trilogy, particularly in its first novel The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, suggest there is more to the story: that the omission of a reader map adds emphasis to the series’ postcolonial critique of what map theorists call “the cartographic gaze.” Associating the very idea of a world map with the arrogance of empire, The Inheritance Trilogy characterizes the god’s eye view of colonial cartography as harmfully misguided, even blasphemous, in its attempt to capture the world from a single totalizing perspective. Jemisin counters the objectifying vantage point of the god’s eye view with the subjective narrative perspective of the colonized other. She is by no means the only fantasy author to use first-person narration to promote postcolonial perspectives, but doing so enables her to recapture a depth of experience that is lost when worlds (both imaginary and real) are framed by the colonial cartographic gaze.
