ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter I examined how a failed identification with the paternal order precipitates a crisis of selfhood that motivates specific forms of travel. These travels, I argued, reflect an effort to fashion a self outside the paternal order. Moreover, I have suggested that psychoanalysis can enhance our understanding of this dynamic, insofar as its depiction of the oedipal drama as a developmental achievement mirrors the pull of “reality” whereby a subject surrenders the blissful fantasized space of the maternal dyad and consents to a degree of socialization. Readings of recent travel novels show that the travel cultures of the late twentieth century exhibit a decidedly different attitude toward the symbolic father than their earlier counterparts. The Grand Tour narratives of the nineteenth century, for instance, reflect the height of confidence vested by colonial powers in their regimes. As Mary Louise Pratt demonstrates, the purveyors of this genre
of travel writing consisted almost exclusively of upper class male explorers, such as Richard Burton, James Grant, and John Speke, who reveal little of the crisis of faith in Enlightenment rationality that afflicts later travel texts (Imperial Eyes 200-213). Pratt shows also that women’s travel writing flourished during this period, but rather than celebrate the solidity of colonial selfhood, these texts emphasized the heightened latitude of subjectivity that travel enabled. The work of Mary Kingsley in the 1890s, for example, reflects transformations in the public sphere that followed emancipatory movements in Europe and Britain. Yet while women’s travel narratives frequently celebrated the escape from overly restrictive expectations back home regarding proper gender roles, they still showed a great deal of faith in Enlightenment principles; enhanced opportunities for individual expression were optimistically linked to new modalities of political freedom.1
