Cultural Geography: Session 3-4 Travel writing and power

Cultural Geography: Session 3-4Travel writing and power • Introductions: imperialism, ideology and travel writings • Imperialist ideologies • Descriptive approach and the concept of imaginative geographies • Pejorative approach: failures in the European gaze. • Epiphenomenal approach: narrative style and imperial powers • Imperialist hegemony: postmodernism and feminism • The significance of women travel writers • Female travel writing as an epiphenomenon of patriarchy • Female travel writing as an ambiguously positioned epiphenomenon • Summary points

Introductions: imperialism, ideology and travel writings • Imperialism 'An unequal territorial relationship, usually between states, based on domination and subordination (Smith, 1994, p. 274) • European imperialism C16-C17th - proto-imperialism C18-early C20th - imperialism 2nd half C20th -neo-imperialism • Widely seen as economic, political and social process • Also seen as a cultural process

Introductions: imperialism, ideology and travel writings • Pawson (1990) 'ideology of imperialism' 'a cultural perspective' that served to justify 'the subjugation of peoples and lands beyond Europe' • 3 senses of term ideology can applied to discussions of culture and European imperialism • C18th-C19th European 'travel writings' • Range of forms of travel writings - personal letters, novels, expeditionary and scientific accounts

Imperialist Ideologies: Adopting a Descriptive Approach • Spread of European people, government and commodities involved the spread of European culture into non-European areas • Spread of European 'ideologies' such as Christianity, science, liberalism, laissez-faire. • 'Material cultural geography' mapped out diffusion of cultural landscapes features (e.g. Sauer studies of Mexico and New Mexico) • More symbolic cultural geographies of imperialism developed by Edward Said, Alison Blunt, Derek Gregory and Mary Louise Pratt • Focus on imaginative geographies of imperialism

Imaginative Geographies • Term first used by Edward Said in 'Orientalism' • General 'ontological' argument Physical/objective spaces are endowed with 'poetics' or 'imaginative or figurative values' • Social argument 'figurations of place, space and landscape that dramatise distance and difference in such a way that 'our' space is divided and demarcated from 'their' space ' (Gregory, 1995, p. 29). I.e. Social/cultural boundaries between 'the Same' and 'the Other'' are mapped onto physical space.

Imaginative geographies • General 'ontological; argument: • Social argument: • Specific arguments about European imperialism: • Imperialism was centred around the struggle over space • This struggle 'not only about soldiers and cannons but also about ideas and forms, about images and imaginings' (Said, 1994, p. 6). • Images and imaginings of the space of the Orient, or 'the East', have been central Western (Occidental) thought

Imagined Geographies Within European Imperialism The Orient as place of mystery, culture, romance

Imagined Geographies Within European Imperialism The Orient as place of mystery, culture, romance: the exotic and erotic

Imagined Geographies Within European Imperialism Orient as place of poverty, superstition, barbarism and danger

Imagined geographies within European imperialism • Particular places came to occupy a central place in the imaginings of Europeans E.g. 'The search for the start of the Nile', 'cruises up the Nile'; see Said (1995), Gregory (1995), Godlewska (1995) • Other places with a 'quasi-mystical appeal' E.g. Timbuktu, Shangrila(see Bishop, 1989) • Some places viewed in a negative light E.g. 'Darkest Africa', the Islamic and Arab world (the Orient) • Multiple and shifting imaginative geographies E.g Pratt (1992): Africa as a place of riches, a place of inhospitable environments and people, a place of opportunity and activity

Imperialist ideologies: pejorative perspectives • Are imagined geographies of imperialism false? E.g. (1) Hecht and Cockburn (1989) • European travellers in Amazonia constantly remarked on the region's richness in vegetation and the poverty of the indigenous people • Amazonians seen as responsible for under-development of area • European observations false: Environment difficult; Amazonian people had complex and successful agricultural practices which were ignored by the imperialist's "patronising eye" which sees the Amazon as "a wild biological entity".

Imperialist ideologies: pejorative perspectives (continued) E.G. (2) Pratt (1992) • Many C18th European travel writers in Africa 'encoded' what they encountered as "'unimproved" and ...as ... available for improvement" (Pratt, 1992, p. 61) • Much of this 'unimproved land' was not empty land but was used for subsistence agriculture • However: 'The European improving eye produces subsistence habitats as 'empty' landscapes, meaningful only in terms of a capitalist future and of their potential for producing a marketable surplus' (Pratt, 1992, p. 61) • By contrast: 'From the point of view of their inhabitants ... these same spaces are lived as intensely humanized, saturated with local history and meaning, where plants, creatures, and geographical formations have names, uses, symbolic functions, histories, places in indigenous knowledge formations' (Pratt, 1992, p. 61) • Other examples?

Imperialist ideologies: epiphenomenal perspectives • Does not evaluate 'truthfulness' of travel writing but how its creation is linked into relations of power • Pratt and Said also takes an epiphenomenal approach: • Said argues that 'Orientalism' should be evaluated less in reference to the 'reality' of the Orient and more in terms as a creation of the Occident, as a creation of Europe. • 'Orientalism' is not trying to be an 'accurate representation of the Orient' but trying 'at one and the same time to characterise the Orient as alien, and to incorporate it schematically on a theatrical stage whose audience, manager, and actors are for Europe' (Said 1995 p. 71) • European travel writers, the areas in which they travelled were seen as foreign, their journeys were arranged and to a great extent enabled by the European power, and they were written up for a European public

Travel writing and imperialist power • Pratt (1992) identifies 2 forms of travel writing in the C18/19th • Narratives of conquest E.g. (1) Description de 'Egypte Alongside 55,000 solders invasion involved 150 artists, scientists, scholars, engineers and technicians 'displays a messianic desire for conquest and control and portrays Egypt as 'a country blessed by nature' but in need of 'French law and ... technology to realise its full potential' (Godlewska, 1995, p. 5).

Travel writing and imperialist power • Pratt (1992) identifies 2 forms of travel writing in the C18/19th • Narratives of conquest E.g. (1) Description de 'Egypte E.g. (2) 'I think experience shows that they [the Egyptian's] have got under it [British colonial rule] far better government that in the whole history of the world they ever had before, and which not only is a benefit to the whole of the civilised West ...We are in Egypt not merely for the sake of the Egyptians, though we are there for their sake' (Arthur Balfour, British Prime Minister; quoted in Said, 1995, p.33 ).

'Dr. Livingstone I presume' 'Discovered' the source of the Nile - Travel writing and imperialist power Henry Moreton Stanley E.g. (3)

'Stanley's geography was... a militant and manly science, dedicated to the subjugation of wild nature; its books and maps were weapons of conquest rather than objects of contemplation (Driver, 1991, p. 140) Travel writing and imperialist power • Lectured to geographical societies and spoke of commercial value of Geography • Also very 'militant' view of geography

Travel writing and imperialist power • Used the imagined geography of 'Dark Africa': 'the iconography of light and darkness ... represented European penetration of Africa as simultaneously a process of domination, enlightenment and emancipation ... African explorers [seen] in heroic terms, as pioneers of civilisation in the dark places of the earth" (Driver, 1991).

Travel writing and imperialist power • 'Narratives of anti-conquest' • Emerged in response to shifts in European culture "Euroimperialism faced a legitimation crisis. The histories of broken treaties, genocides, mass displacements and enslavements became less and less acceptable as rationalist and humanitarian ideologies took hold"(Pratt, 1992, p. 74). • Portrayed Europeans as being 'innocent' of the domination and conquest. • Took 2 forms: • Scientific • Sentimentalised

The imaginary geography of scientific travels E.g. John Barrow's Travel's into the interior of Southern Africa in the years 1797 and 1798 'The following day we passed the Great Fish River, though not without some difficulty, the banks being high and steep, the stream strong, the bottom rocky, and the water deep. Some fine trees of the willow of Babylon, or a variety of that specie, skirted the river of this place. The opposite site presented a very beautiful country, well wooded and watered, and plentifully covered with grass, among which grew in great abundance, a species of indigo ..… The first night we encamped in the Kaffir country was near a stream called Kowsha, which falls into the Great Fish River. On the following day we passed the villages of Mallo and Tooley, the two chiefs and brothers we had seen in Zuure Veldt, delightfully situated on two eminencies rising from the said streamlet. We also passed several villages placed along the Banks of the Guengka and its branches, and the next day we came to a river of very considerable magnitude called the Keiskamma' 'the space/time of travel ... is textualised primarily by the linguistic renderings of the 'face of the country' as seen by agents whose presence is effaced by the language of the text' (Pratt, 1992, p. 76 )

The imaginary geography of scientific travels E.g. John Barrow's Travel's into the interior of Southern Africa in the years 1797 and 1798 'The following day we passed the Great Fish River, though not without some difficulty, the banks being high and steep, the stream strong, the bottom rocky, andthe water deep. Some fine trees of the willow of Babylon, or a variety of that specie, skirted the river of this place. The opposite site presented a very beautiful country, well wooded and watered, and plentifully covered with grass, among which grew in great abundance, a species of indigo ..… The first night we encamped in the Kaffir country was near a stream called Kowsha, which falls into the Great Fish River. On the following day we passed the villages of Mallo and Tooley, the two chiefs and brothers we had seen in Zuure Veldt, delightfully situated on two eminencies rising from the said streamlet. We also passed several villages placed along the Banks of the Guengka and its branches, and the next day we came to a river of very considerable magnitude called the Keiskamma' 'the space/time of travel ... is textualised primarily by the linguistic renderings of the 'face of the country' as seen by agents whose presence is effaced by the language of the text' (Pratt, 1992, p. 76 )

The imaginary geography of scientific travels • Meaning placed on the sights observed by the traveller, particularly any panoramic vistas and notable flora and fauna. • The text ignores influence of the observer on what is seen is denied. • Presents the European traveller as a harmless observer/traveller

The imaginary geography of sentimentalised travel writing Mungo Park's Travels in the interior districts of Africa 'Next morning (March 10th) we set out for Samamingkoos. On the road we overtook a women and two boys with an ass; she informed us that she was going for Bambarra, but had been stopped on the road by a party of Moors, who had taken most of her clothes, and some gold from her; and she would be of necessity returning to Deena till the fast moon was over. The same evening the new moon was seen, which ushered in the month of Rhamadan .... March 11. - By daylight, the Moors were in readiness; but as I had suffered much from the thirst upon the road, I made my boy fill a soofroo of water for my own use; for the Moors assured me that they should not taste either meat or drink till sunset. However, I found that the excessive heat of the sun and the dust we raised in travelling overcame their scruples, and made my soofroo a very useful part of our baggage'

Sentimentalised travel writing:an example 'The textual space/time that corresponds to the space/time of travelling is filled with (made of) human activity, interactions amongst the travellers themselves or the people they encounter ... There is no landscape description at all. Nature is present in so far as it impinges on the social world: the full moon starts Rhamadan; the dust and sun makes everyone thirsty" (Pratt, 1992 , p. 76) • Meaning placed on human interactions • The European traveller seen as an 'anti-hero': as a 'non-interventionist European presence, indeed as a 'victim': 'Things happen to him and he endures and survives' (Pratt, 1992, p. 78)

Travel writing and imperialist power • Anti-conquest narratives were linked to powers of European imperialism • Scientific accounts: • Many sponsored by mercantile and state interests • Accounts influenced subsequent travellers and colonists • Science was collection as well as observation Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew • Many instances of cashing in one findings

Travel writing and imperialist power • Scientific accounts • Many sponsored by mercantile and state interests • Accounts influenced subsequent travellers and colonists • Science was collection as well as observation • Several instances of cashing in one findings • Sentimental accounts: • Many sponsored by mercantile and state interests • Other travellers and settlers drawn by romantic accounts • Travellers made great use of European commodities • 'European anti-hero' a culturally and morally superior being: • 'African greed, African bandrity, African slave trading threaten ... Park does not reciprocate. He would rather die than steal ... Through his anti-conquest, Park acts out the values that underwrote the greatest non-reciprocal non-exchange of all time: the Civilising Mission' (Pratt, 1992, p. 85)

Travel writing as European Hegemony European literate public European hegemony Non-European population • View disrupted by feminist/postmodernist writings of Mills, Blunt and Rose.

Cultural Geography: Session 3-4 Travel writing and power