Islands: Literally and in Literature

My aim is to present a reading of islands as places and resemblances, including an understanding of map-making both as the drawing of contours inhabiting figments of the imagination and of map-making as the creation of spaces in which the familiar can be established. In addition, I will draw on the importance of spatial rather than temporal settings 111 connection with literature and art invested w1th what on~ could call autobiographical elements; the reason, 1t seems, being that places - 111 a kind of imaginary map-making - can reveal an indexicality of the past rather than being merely representational of a certain reality. This is to some extent also where I see a difference between theoretical modes of postmodernism and post-colonialism which I'll touch upon briefly at the end of this paper.