![]() ![]() When Australia was declared by Captain Cook as a Terra Nullius, he made an explicit geographical use of Locke’s philosophy because of its potentialiaty, and amenability to inscription. ![]() In Locke’s greatest influence on the theory of childhood, the concept of tabula rasa, blank mind or absence is significant in the imperial enterprise where the negation of colonial space is a necessary preparation for the great civilizing mission. ![]() The invention of childhood in the discourse of empire is coterminous with that of imperialism where the cross fertilization between childhood and primitivism becomes important since both need growth and maturation. The child holds in balance the contradictory tendencies of imperial rhetoric: authority in balance with nurture, domination with enlightenment, debasement with idealization, negation with affirmation, exploitation with education, filiations with affiliation. The trope of the child, an unique trope, is an important appropriation to the discourse of empire. Devaleena Das THE TROPE OF THE CHILD IN AN IMAGINARY LIFE In Postcolonial literature, the colonised other is represented in terms of tropes to justify imperial rule. ![]()
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