Happy Trails or Keep on Keepin' on...

Well blog family, it's come time for me to say goodbye.... for now. As our class ends and we are no longer required to post, I feel compelled to say something to the extent that you won't be hearing from me for awhile on this blog and that our blog experience has been real. I enjoyed reading all your blogs as I'm sure you've all enjoyed mine.. but in the words of the late Hunter Stockon Thompson, "All hallucinations, no matter how good or how bad, must end." In closing I want to leave you all with a few words from Anthony Bourdain as we all leave the class room set out to travel in our own right...
"Don't tell me what a man says, don't tell me what a man knows, tell me where he's travelled."
and
"The older I get, the more I travel, the less I know."

So long and thanks for all the strange memories!

Response to Early Travel: Emily, Amir.

Emily: Another long title -- is this a genre distinction or a time period distinction?! I found your presentation pretty interesting -- white slave narratives tend to be a little provocative. Thanks for the pork nod by the way, I tend to like pork. As we discussed after your presentation, the fact that he admits to publishing for money and the timeliness of the white slave narrative seems suspicious.. especially when you consider he claims to have been captive for 17 months but the captain of his ship was only a prisoner for 2 months. As you mentioned he loved to quote the bible .. perhaps there's a connection. The bible is all about metaphors and allegorical meanings .. maybe 'your guy' did the allegory thing?

Amir: Thanks to the handout I 'remember' the name of 'your guy.' Bowring seemed like kind of an intelligent douche bag, especially if he started a war. Maybe/probably he stood to make lots of money from the war? Anyway, you set him up as attempting to be fairly objective .. but then you tell us things like how Bowring used metaphors for chinese people like vultures and carrion ants. Scientific racism? Perhaps he should have stuck with translating Scandinavian poetry instead of politics...

I think this or something like this will be the first paragraph or two .....

Understanding the relationship between author and text has long been a topic of critical examination. And whilst I do not wish to enter a discussion with the prominent scholars, like Foucault, Barthes, and Ong (to list a few), who dominate(d) the issue of authors and writers, works and texts, and how we move between each of these, the metaphysics of authorial presence intrigues me. As I see it, understanding authorial representation is a fundamental aspect of the larger picture, i.e., understanding the relationship between author and work on the whole. Specifically, the manner in which authors represent themselves, fictionally or otherwise as a literary device, implore certain questions. Questions much older than Foucault, Barthes, and Ong. Questions that (unfortunately) go all the way back to Plato and to some extent dictate how we have continued to frame and consider the place of the author in a work. Is authorial presence more than just a literary device or means of persuasion? Is a work with a present author more persuasive/believable than a work that lacks authorial presence? Is it problematic to place value judgments on the presence or absence of an author in his/her work? Does authorial presence function differently throughout the various genres of writing? When authors represent themselves somehow in a text, is it always a fictitious representation?
Whether or not these questions have definitive answers is irrelevant. They are relevant insofar as to function as a frame for my examination of ancient and contemporary travel narratives, the presence of their respective authors, and how this tradition has persisted over the ages.

Response to Early Travel: Hillary and Toria and Kellan

Hillary: My initial reaction to your presentation was unfortunately along the lines of what Debbie has told us is old hat. But surely there weren't a whole lot of plants and species of animals frolicking amongst the ice flows. Ostensibly, the search for the NW passage was about finding better trade routes before other countries, and I do not think your presentation really suggested otherwise. Scientific discovery and ethnography seemed to yield significance compared to your larger discussion of the dangerous voyage itself. Unfortunately (for me I think) again the amount of danger involved in arctic voyages seems to bulwark a more imperial/colonial underpinning. Who sends ships through mercilessly devastating ice flows that can stop and/or crush a vessel just to investigate new plants and animals -- would that really be worth the risk? It seems more likely to me that better/faster ways to get things from point A to point B would be of more strategic economic and military value than knowing what kind of vegetation can grow on a glacier or what kinds of unicorn-whales swim with penguins and etc.

Toria: My initial reaction to your presentation was fortunately more in line with the kinds of travel ideas like Hufford's Geertz questions... namely what (if anything) else matters but criticisms of power in scientific / travel writing, and how does the author's placement in his own text speak to these various issues of narrative authority. In my remedial experience and time spent reading scientific texts, I tend to generalize most of them as authorless insofar as scientific fact does not rely on the presence or absence of an author .. the science will speak for itself.. and therefore the author, if located at all, seems and inconsequential. And so, Dr. Lecter, this brings us to Dicey. The humor and attention Dicey draws to himself with regards to his 'science' seems strange, and forces me to consider that 'scientific' travel authors who made a game and wrote about themselves trying to ride a donkey, could have spent better time filling that space with numbers and measurements about jackass dimensions. The only reason I can think of why someone would want to develop such a grand ethos in a scientific travel text is that of material gain.

Kellan: Good game. Your presentation was the best -- keep reaching for those rainbows!

Truth and/in Narrative Power

~Can we use ethics, value, truth and power to provide criticism of scientific travel writing? Or does only power matter?~

~Is writing that explicitly makes the author present more powerful/truthful/vaulable/ethical than writing where the author makes himself less visibly present?~

Damberger - Thompson

To what extent is all travel writing a fiction? What role does fiction play in travel writing? How does technology of travel reinforce (falsely?) truth/objectivity?
Damberger's fake travel had to be prompted/inspired by real events -- we know he didn't do to Africa, but can any parts of his story be true? (could have been true?)
Can fiction as a literary device ever convey fact? How/When?
Technology/power often provide a trustworthy authority even in ficticious moments. Modern examples demonstrate how this practice is still around today. (HST and OZA)