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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'This collection of essays is an important contribution to travel writing studies -- looking beyond the explicitly political questions of postcolonial and gender discourses, it considers the form, poetics, institutions and reception of travel writing in the history of empire and its aftermath.
Starting from the premise that travel writing studies has received much of its impetus and theoretical input from the sometimes overgeneralized precepts of postcolonial studies and gender studies, this collection aims to explore more widely and more locally the expression of imperialist discourse in travel writing, and also to locate within contemporary travel writing attempts to evade or re-engage with the power politics of such discourse. There is a double focus then to explore further postcolonial theory in European travel writing (Anglophone, Francophone and Hispanic), and to trace the emergence of postcolonial forms of travel writing. The thread that draws the two halves of the collection together is an interest in form and relations between form and travel.' (Publisher's blurb)
Contents
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Making It Move : The Aboriginal in the Whitefella's Artifact,
single work
criticism
(p. 148-166)'In 1984, artist Krim Benterrak, a Moroccan Berber resident in Australia since 1977, white Australian academic Stephen Muecke, and Aboriginal Australian Paddy Roe published Reading the Country: Introduction to Nomadology, (q.v.) dedicating the volume 'To the/nomads of Broome, always there and/always on the move'. Movement sets the course of the book. Hearing Aborigine Paddy Roe's expression for the production of Aboriginal culture, 'We must make these things move', Muecke 'reflect[s] on the potentially static nature of our project: the production of a whiteman's artefact, a book' and askes himself, 'How could I make this thing move?' (p. 148)
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Reconciling Strangers : White Australian Travel Narratives and the Semiotics of Empathy,
single work
criticism
(p. 167-179)'In Australia, reconciliation between Aboriginal and European Australians has become a field of dominant utopian discourses in the public sphere. Not unexpectedly, reconciliation has become a significant theme for contemporary white Australian travel writers. But the meaning of reconciliation is not uniform or uncontested, and discourses of reconciliation have evolved in response to significant political events. This chapter examines how the discourse of reconciliation becomes manifest in recent travel narratives, and how the 'script' of the performance of reconciliation has changed subtly over time.' (p. 167)
