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!