ABSTRACT
Like other areas of the world implicated in processes of Western imperialism, and despite-or perhaps because of-its inaccessible and inhospitable nature, Patagonia has galvanised the imagination of travellers throughout history. As a result, it has accrued dense layers of textuality as myriad travellers have followed in the footsteps of early, largely European voyagers of discovery or scientifi c exploration there, such as Ferdinand Magellan, Antonio Pigafetta, Charles Darwin, Robert Fitzroy, and others. The signifi cance of those travellers’ accounts of the region is such that not only have they been read and consumed widely (and even republished in new editions of late)2 but some of them are now considered intrinsic to a national literature and culture in Argentina and Chile.3 Moreover, many of those travellers’ experiences have had an impact far beyond the culture of travel: Darwin’s journey on the Beagle eventually had the singular effect of transforming the history of scientifi c thought, for example, while Fitzroy’s logbooks and instruments of the same trip contributed more broadly to the science of meteorology.4 Furthermore, the legacy of European travellers such as these-notwithstanding the political or scientifi c ramifi cations of their works back home-is written into the region’s cartography. As Fernanda Peñaloza writes, “a brief sampling of the toponymy of Patagonia demonstrates these [travel] texts’ appropriative power over naming and representing the region: there is an Andean mountain range called Darwin . . . a lake called Musters and a volcano called Hudson”,5 names which Argentine journalist Roberto Payró sardonically noted were “all of them diffi cult to pronounce for those who speak a Latin tongue.”6 Patagonia is thus a space which is “inevitably overdetermined”, one that, if it were included in their study, Patrick Holland and Graham Huggan would describe as a zone of repetition, around which various apparently “unshakable” mythologies have been generated.7 Among these myths feature the idea that “Patagonia en el imaginario occidental es metáfora de últimas fronteras y aventuras” [Patagonia in the Western imaginary is a metaphor of the ultimate frontier and adventure]8 as well as the notion that, to quote North American travel writer Paul Theroux’s now famous aphorism, “it is the ultimate nowhere place.”9
