“Political Atmospherics”: The India Round Table Conference’s Atmospheric Environments, Bodies and Representations, London 1930–1932

Legg, Stephen

Abstract

Between 1930-1932 the three sessions of the Round Table Conference in London drew over 70 Indian delegates to the city, for up to three months, to debate India's constitutional future within the British Empire. This paper argues that the "atmosphere" of the conference was central to its successes and failures, and that studying atmospheres can help us think about the co-constitution of place, bodies and politics more broadly. It approaches atmospheres from three interrelated perspectives. First, the atmospheric environment of the conference is set, in terms of both the physical geography of the weather and the human geography of the conference venue. Second, it traces conference bodies, which endured the weather, used it as metaphor, and attuned their politics to the affective atmosphere. The paper concludes with reflections on representing non-representational atmospheres. It argues that the current atmospheres literature is oddly de-raced; debates about weather and bodies' reactions to social and political atmospheres being inherently and always racialised. Analysing the reactions of and to diverse Indian delegates in 1930s London gives us insights into an interwar colonial geographical imagination, while also highlighting the neglect of race in atmospheric literature to date, and the potential for thinking about meteorological and affective atmospheres together.

Citation

Legg, S. (2019). “Political Atmospherics”: The India Round Table Conference’s Atmospheric Environments, Bodies and Representations, London 1930–1932. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 110(3), 774-792. https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2019.1630247

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: May 10, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Aug 26, 2019
• Publication Date: Aug 26, 2019
• Deposit Date: May 28, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Aug 26, 2020
• Journal: Annals of the American Association of Geographers
• Print ISSN: 2469-4452
• Electronic ISSN: 2469-4460
• Publisher: Routledge
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 110
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 774-792
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2019.1630247
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2099855
• Publisher URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/24694452.2019.1630247
• Contract Date: May 28, 2019