Fatherland and Postspace in Andre Dubus III’s The House of Sand and Fog

This article focuses on the notion of space and its influence on the social and cultural polices in Andre Dubus III’s bestselling novel, The House of Sand and Fog, through the perspective of cultural geographoy. Deploying Harvey and Upstone, the writer has tried to elaborate whether the disruption of geographical and cultural borders in recent decades has modified the general conception of “space,” or it still pursues a Euclidean one. To this end, notions of “Euclidean space,” “postspace,” and “place” have been studied. It is argued that, despite the demystification of notions like “nation,” “cultural purity,” “social heterogeneity,” and the racial and cultural diversity in recent decades, the West still followes in the tradition of Euclidean conception of “space” which emphasizes borders and boundaries. As a result, the binary of “us vs. them” is forgrounded wihin the borders of empire, and discrimination, a cultural one, becomes a prevalent practice. This paradox is addressed while postmodenism has been founded on a new conception of space as “postspace” which, accordingly, upsets the hierarchies of imperialism and liberal humanism.