Mary Louise Pratt Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation Chapters 1, 4, 9
Ian McKay and Robin Bates In the Prince of the Past: The Making of the Public Past in Twentieth Century Nova Scotia selected chapters
Krista Thompson, An Eye for the Tropics: Tourism, Photography, and Framing the Caribbean Picturesque Intro, Chapters 1 and 4
1) Thompson speaks of the Reverend William Gilpin and his desire for a specific type of photograph. He insists that people, should they be tolerated at all, must be more of the "loitering peasant" variety, rather than the "industrious mechanic" type, explaining that this was much more authentic of Jamaica. Were Gilpin and the other white elites who flocked for the photo opportunity aware that most of the aspects of the island that they desired were wholly artificial, or were they merely telling themselves a fairly ignoble, if not profitable lie?
ReplyDelete2) Barring the above example, Is the tropicalization that Pratt examines intentional, or merely the unfortunate consequence of other aspects of the colony, such as economy, subjugation, or colonial politics?
3) McKay explains the difference between heritage and history, but if we dwell upon this topic, could history not merely be a more refined heritage? Try as we might, do not historians also lend their academic biases to history, just as an overtly proud people may lend their cultural biases to their heritage? How do we truly differentiate between the two?
1. In her introduction, Pratt talks about the use of "strategies of innocence" by which the European bourgeois attempted to separate themselves from legacies of colonialism. Do we still use these strategies today? For those of European descent who travel to the developing world, no matter how much we spout anti-colonialist, self-determinationist, postdevelopment rhetoric, are we ever able to separate ourselves from that history? Is it ever possible to move past the colonizer-colonized dichotomy?
ReplyDelete2. In light of McKay's distinction between history and heritage, is Canadian history, as it's taught in elementary and high schools, more "real history" or heritage? What are the implications of this?
1. Pratt remarks that there were several hyphenated-European witnesses to the scandal of barbarism in the Congo, and that they were in a unique position to critique the imperial project because of their own multiple and conflicted identities. How does this relate to the experiences of men and women that we’ve seen from a more intimate perspective? Are people who live on the fringes of empire, or who exist between two worlds (who are involved in interracial marriages, for example) more able to critique empire, and see it for what it is, than individuals who are firmly on one side of the exchanges?
ReplyDelete2. McKay and Bates observe that heritage creates insiders and outsiders, because not everybody is as attuned to their heritage, and because of the sheer number of potential “heritages” that someone can ascribe to. Is the same true of empire? We’ve seen quite clearly that empire can create insiders and outsiders through various processes of “othering”, and much of empire is imagined or socially-constructed. Can we see any other links between the two?
1. Is the ethical problem with tourism/history simply that “plaques, staged events, employment opportunities, and countless other state-sanctioned myths and symbols come to be regulated by assumptions that, factually, are not the case.”? Or is it more the particular myths that are bought and sold sanitize local history and “promote the marginalization and exclusion of others.” (McKay and Bates, 16)? Do McKay and Bates seem to imply that a more serious (professional?) 'history' (vs. Heritage) would be more true? Or is that history only an improvement because it can be more critical? Do we think that some stories are more important to tell, regardless of whether they are more true?
ReplyDelete(b) (This relates to the other readings as well) Can there be critical public history and/or critical tourism? Would it have to be not-for-profit? Run only by 'locals'? Could it ever replace commercial tourism/history, or is tourism/history fuelled by a public demand for Innocence?
2. Do Bates/McKay's or Thompson's accounts leave space for 'authoethnographic expressions' (Pratt, 9) that engage in critical or anti-colonial ways with the colonizer's terms? Or, in these readings, is the colonizer's narrative about the place so pervasive that self-expression and state/corporate marketing begin to look the same?
1. Thompson traces a development in tourist images, noting changes in and from the picturesque. She also traces various influences in developing tourist images. How do these developments and shifts relate to policies surrounding colonialism at the time? Is there a correlation between what Thompson identifies as classifying the landscape and the context of racial policies during the period? If so, what further colonial purpose do the images then serve?
ReplyDelete(Related question: 2. Especially for Thompson and Mackay/Bates, images serve a powerful role in the creation and promotion of tourism/history. Is it possible to use these images for more 'empowering' purposes in the context of local populations? Or, are images necessarily tools of the imperial gaze that cannot be separated from this contextual history?)
3. Read together, all three readings point to the difficulty (or perhaps impossibility) of (re)presenting 'authentic' (however that is defined) culture for the consumption of tourists. However, none of the authors offer a concrete alternative in such representation. Do tourist/consumer interests always need to be at odds with 'authentic' culture? Is it possible, and if so through what strategies, to create a representative tourism culture that is both empowering for local populations but also valuable for the tourist? How does 'othering' factor into this process, and is it necessary within the realm of tourism?
In Pratt's writing she talks about how writing about travels creates the 'other'. Another way to look at this situation is to ask, how does travel writing create the European traveller? Can their accounts of travel be read as a discription of Europe or the Empire?
ReplyDeleteIn many situations history or heritage are comodified and consumed. In the example of the Evangeline story this week, the extreme of the example is considered. The outcome is significant for a large group of people including the tousrists who are now able to see the forest in the absence of trees. In this sense, does something have to be true to be valuable or powerful? Is it justified to incarnate society through abusing history to to create a specific version of reality?
On page 14 in chapter 5 McKay writes, “Many besides Macdonald came to identify it (tourism) as the industry of last resort, a have-not provinces one remaining hope for economic development”. How true is this statement? Was it Nova Scotia’s last hope? What would lead individuals to this conclusion?
ReplyDeleteThe travel writing analyzed by Pratt is to a large degree written by individuals on personal adventures focusing on the experiences that they saw, lived and encountered. Are these writers wrong then to frame their narratives from a personal perspective as Pratt at times seems to allude to?
In Thompson's chapters, she emphasizes that in early postcards, natives were often posed with 'colonial transplants' - bananas and the like. What does this say about empires intruding into intimate spaces? It's obvious that these cameras were intruding on (at least imagined) private space. Did tourists recognize their handiwork in the addition of bananas?
ReplyDeletePratt compares two travel narratives - one in which the European is the observer and one where he is mutually observed by the natives. On the outset, the second narrative would seem more 'fair,' but is European curiosity just being reflected back on itself?
Pratt talks about 'autoethnographic' forms of representation, where the 'native' presents their own story by engaging with the colonizer's language. Is this better than perhaps a more 'pure' form of self-representation that doesn't engage with a colonizing force? Or is it just the post-colonial form of cross-cultural exchange? What can you get from one style of communication that you can't get from another?
ReplyDeleteThe opening quote of the Thompson article is "Our landscape is its own monument: its meaning can only be traced on the underside." What could the 'underside' refer to - farmers or 'natives' familiar with the land, or something else? What does 'monument' signify, especially with the emphasis put on iconography in the introduction?
It is interesting to consider how travel writing can be seen as an important bridge between the intimate and the public within the Imperial project. How does it compare to the soap advertisements which we read about earlier? How is the intimacy of the traveler’s perspective and personal account undermined by the use of common stylistic approaches which are highlighted by Pratt? Is this intimacy any less affected by the European imperial vision in the case of the “hyphenated white men”?
ReplyDeleteMary Louise Pratt gives extensive analysis of the gendered aspects of ‘seeing’ in travel writing as well as the changing imperialist projects and ideologies which inform the style, subject and perspective represented in travel narratives. How would Pratt’s notions of a gendered eye, or vision of the interior be complicated by the reality of travel and nature photography? Would the “textual mechanisms that created value in the discourse of [male travel writers]: fantasies of dominance and possession, painting that is simultaneously a material inventory” (210) be translatable to the static image of a photograph?
How have images of ‘tropicalized’ spaces changed, or remained the same, in contemporary travel campaigns? Consider the connection often made between tropicalized spaces, travel, and disease? How does this consideration complicate the connections made by British colonials and white local elites between the development and modernity of the colonies as being “intrinsically tied up in tropicalization” (12)?