Mary Louise Pratt's "Imperial Eyes:Travel Writing and Transculturation" (Book Note)

 

In "Imperial Eyes," Mary Pratt explores the theme of how travel writing visualized and shaped relations between the European metropole and the non-European periphery, offering an ambitious work that intertwines textual analysis from cultural studies with the historical context of European imperialism. Pratt's approach involves using historical context to break down simplistic binary oppositions such as metropole versus periphery, masculine versus feminine, and white versus nonwhite, aiming to establish a more nuanced interplay between them. She employs the term "transculturation" from ethnography to describe the selective borrowings by one culture from another, framing it as a reciprocal but unequal exchange. According to Pratt, Europe defines America, is redefined by America, and Americanists reshape their identities in the light of Europe's imperial vision. Imperial eyes, as depicted in the text, encompass both masculine and feminine perspectives, with male and female travelers offering differing rather than antithetical perceptions of subjugated lands and peoples.

 

The book, presented as a series of essays on selected themes and travelers, begins by examining science and sentiment in the period 1750-1800. The naturalists' scientific endeavors, based on Linnaeus's system, are portrayed as a conquest veiled in the guise of passive but "androcentric" observation, reflecting the bureaucratic imperatives of a bourgeois order profiting from colonialism. In contrast, the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century travelers, adopting a sentimental and autobiographical approach, depicted themselves as suffering heroes proposing a civilizing relationship with indigenous peoples while serving as the vanguard of capitalism's unequal exchange.

 

The second part delves into the reinvention of America (1800-1850), beginning with Alexander von Humboldt's influential travels. Humboldt's portrayal of South America as a land of pristine nature served as a foundation for subsequent male and female travelers, who highlighted the potential for capitalist development and sought to improve creole societies within European conventions of middle-class philanthropy. Female travelers, in particular, focused on the domestic sphere and addressed social issues within these uplifting conventions.

 

South American intellectuals, starting with Humboldt, ironically contributed to Americanist scholarship, particularly in pre-Columbian archaeology, which was conveyed to Europe. However, their focus differed from Humboldt's naturalist perspective, as they were more concerned with constructing a new civil society that preserved existing hierarchies of class, gender, and race. Domingo Faustino Sarmiento's reflections on barbarism and civilization in 1845 exemplify this approach, portraying an authentic Americanist vision as a barbarous consequence of a violent colonial past and its mixed population, while the "civilized" alternative merely imitated Europe artificially.

 

Pratt, with her expertise in Spanish and Portuguese literature, provides a clear and insightful exploration of South American themes in the second part. This section draws intriguing parallels with African travel accounts. In the third part, "Imperial Stylistics, 1860-1980," Pratt notes that mid-Victorian imperial visions, both masterful and masculine, persist in late twentieth-century accounts of Alberto Moravia in Africa and Paul Theroux in South America.

 

While Pratt deserves praise for the breadth of her historical exploration, she encounters challenges, especially in the cross-disciplinary analysis. Delving into the deeper meaning of travelers' language, she appropriately considers gender but sometimes simplifies the psychological aspects of her subjects. Rather than recognizing masculine and feminine attributes as historically informed categories subject to change, they are treated as fixed psychological realities. This approach, she argues, mirrors the reduction of foreign lands and peoples to sexual objects in travel writing. The psychologism in some analyses perpetuates this practice, underscoring the enduring cultural baggage of sexism and racism. Pratt acknowledges the difficulty of finding an analytical language that liberates rather than perpetuates these burdens.

 

From a historian's standpoint, the incorporation of the historical context of capitalism in Pratt's work may pose challenges, not due to the Marxist framework but because of its static treatment. The bourgeois order is presented as fully formed from the outset, influencing the natural histories of the eighteenth century. A capitalist vanguard emerges in the early nineteenth century, and subsequently, capitalism, portrayed in undifferentiated forms from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century, shapes the imperial perceptions of travelers. For instance, Mongo Park's vision of reciprocal exchange with West Africans is linked to Marx's ideas of unequal exchange rather than the contemporaneous perspectives of Adam Smith and classical political economists. Additionally, the role of Africans in shaping Park's notions of exchange is overlooked as a neglected instance of transculturation.

 

A more compelling case for reciprocity disguising the unequal exchange of capitalism is presented with Mary Kingsley. Pratt acknowledges Kingsley's cultural relativism, influenced in part by her gender, which contributed to a more sympathetic view of African culture. Although recent feminist scholarship characterizes Kingsley as both pro-imperialist and anticolonialist, Pratt argues that her associates, the Liverpool traders, sought to solidify conditions of unequal exchange in West Africa, and Kingsley, along with E. D. Morel and others, discredited early African nationalists. Unfortunately, "Imperial Eyes" does not consider African writers in its exploration of transculturation.

 

While these concerns may seem like minor points of historical detail, imprecision can lead to confusion. The identification of Pierre Du Chaillu, Henry Stanley, Joseph Conrad, and Roger Casement as "hyphenated white men" of dual ethnicity raises questions. The categorization implies that they were leading critics of empire confronting Euroexpansionism, white supremacy, class domination, and heterosexism. However, this characterization raises questions about whether references to Casement's homosexuality are veiled and, if so, how it intersects with the bisexuality of Richard Burton or the mysterious sexuality of Cecil Rhodes, an architect of empire. Both advocates and critics of empire, Pratt contends, come in various forms, such as white, hyphenated white, male, female, heterosexual, homosexual, aristocratic, bourgeois, proletarian, brown, and black. Their choices, as human agents, were shaped by their historical context and made in light of their self-interest and ideological inclinations.