GeoJournal 56: 241–242, 2002.
© 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
241
Book review
Peter Redfield, Space in the Tropics: From Convicts to
Rockets in French Guiana. University of California Press:
Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2000. 361 pp., 21 b/w photo-
graphs, 4 maps, 4 tables, bibliography, index. US $55 cloth;
US $22.50 paper. ISBN 0-520-21984-8(cloth); ISBN 0-520-
21985-6 (paper).
This book examines the meanings of ‘place’ found in the
nineteenth-century penal colony of French Guiana and in
the twentieth-century space centre subsequently developed
in that territory. Although written by an anthropologist, the
subject matter is clearly one that merits the attention of
geographers.
This description, however, hardly begins to portray ad-
equately the experience of reading this book – an experience
I can only liken to that of watching an adroit ‘skipper’ of
stones throwing pebbles across the surface of a lake. Each
pebble has been carefully chosen and is brightly illumined
for an instant as it catches the sun (and our attention) be-
fore it careens across the water. The technique is flawless,
exhilarating to watch. But, when it is over, have we been
captivated simply by the performance of the moment? Have
the pebbles left ripples or sunk like a stone?
Such an analogy comes to mind because one can only
stand in awe of Redfield’s many undoubted talents. In an era
in which, to quote Stephen Jay Gould, ‘science self-selects
for poor-writing’ (Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle Boston: Har-
vard University Press, 1987, p. 107), Redfield’s book stands
out as the work of an accomplished literary stylist. His
research range is one of astonishing breadth – the back
cover’s promotion correctly promises coverage of the myth
of Robinson Crusoe, nineteenth-century prison reform, the
Dreyfus Affair, tropical medicine, outer space, satellite tech-
nology, economic development and ecotourism. But this
breathless copy itself misses Redfield’s equally dazzling
intellectual facility with all of the latest and most fashion-
able theories, from Foucault’s archaeologies of power to the
construction of colonial identities.
What perhaps appeared at first to be a rather strange
choice of two case studies in French Guiana now becomes
apparent to us as an extremely cleverly devised research pro-
ject. At its core, as Redfield himself describes his endeavour,
this work addresses the greater ecology of modern expertise.
The thesis is that modern categories of nature and techno-
logy can only be understood in relation to each other, and
further, that neither can be adequately understood without
recourse to spatial terms (p. 23). As he observes, somewhat
differently in the Preface, does it matter where things hap-
pen? Or, more precisely, what might it reveal that different
things happen in the same place? (p. xiv).
It is only when Redfield’s methodology becomes appar-
ent that some readers will begin to wonder whether we will
experience anything more than academic ‘performance art’,
or come away from this book with any longer-lasting under-
standing. Using an approach he calls ‘thinking through the
world’, Redfield tells us analysis is best served by descrip-
tion with a minimum of overt intervention, for when facts
are unexpected they disrupt interpretive assumptions and in
doing so can speak for themselves – not in the preemptive
tones of positive certainty, but in the uneasy echoes of lim-
iting doubt (p. xv). In keeping with this approach, ‘rather
than offer direct commentary’ on the interviews that occur
throughout this book, Redfield prefers to let their words
dangle free, like a live wire (p. 240). We begin to see that
the eclectic range of Redfield’s topics of discussion has an-
other role, for by their very juxtaposition, they are intended
to bring into view objects that are otherwise too often lost
between the fault lines of knowledge (p. xv). This is all very
well, but from an organizational angle, it sometimes makes
it hard to follow the book’s argument. Redfield’s postmod-
ern approach is one that the reader will applaud or decry,
depending on their perspective, but it is one that some-
times encourages Redfield’s otherwise undoubted flair for
language to flights of rhetoric that obscure the basic point,
and portray commonplaces as insights.
In terms of content, the core of the work lies in Red-
field’s comparisons of the experiences of French Guiana’s
penal colony and space centre. In a framework laid out far
too late in the book (p. 186), he argues that such a com-
parison can be made on three levels. The first, a "literal
one", notes the structural similarities between the two pro-
jects. The second level considers each project’s relation to a
different understanding of ‘place’ and the third level exam-
ines their ‘intersections’ with wider notions of ‘nature’ and
‘technology’. Each of these levels requires some elaboration
in order to illustrate his arguments.
Thus, at the ‘literal level’ of comparison, Redfield ob-
serves that both the nineteenth-century penal colony and
the twentieth-century space centre were located by a ma-
jor colonial power (France) in a spatially and economically
peripheral location (French Guiana), a metropolitan decision
with no input from the local community. In both cases,
French Guiana’s location was a key consideration in its
favour. In the penal colony’s case, distance from France
was paramount, its tropical climate part of the punishment
and its very remoteness an aid to prison security. In the
space centre’s case, its almost equatorial location was cru-
cial to achieve geosynchronous orbits for French, and later
European, satellites. A remote location also safeguarded that
technology, and the vast surrounds of undeveloped territory
greatly restricted the costs of any possible accidents at the
space centre. Redfield observes (p. 127) that the bureaucrats
charged with making the locational decisions for these two
very different projects, although separated by almost a cen-
tury, came up with virtually identical short lists of possible
sites within the French domain.