The words ‘space’, ‘place’ and ‘environment’ traditionally encompass much of what geographers do and have done; in recent decades, the meanings attributed to these have become a crucial matter of debate in cultural and literary theory.But anti-colonial thought has long recognised the need to fundamentally redefine the relationship between culture and the environments of postcolonial (nation-)spaces. For Aimé Césaire and Amílcar Cabral, such redefinition was part and parcel of liberation struggle. Cabral, the one-time agronomy student, writes that culture arises out of ‘the physical reality of the environmental humus in which it develops, and it reflects the organic nature of society’ (1974, 42). This also means situating colonialism’s brutal human economy as the socio-environmental oppression that it also is. Césaire describes lucidly in Discourse on Colonialism (1950) that, when he talks about colonialism, he is also ‘talking about natural economies that have been disrupted – harmonious and viable economies adapted to the indigenous population – about malnutrition permanently introduced, agricultural development oriented solely toward the benefit of metropolitan countries, the looting of products’ (original emphasis) (2001, 43).