Name: Amira Essmat

Course: Travel Writing

Professor: Amal Mazhar

A Summary of Representing the Other by Carl

Thompson
Carl Thompson speaks about a narrative called "Narrative of a Second Voyage in Search of a
North Passage by John Ross. Thompson explains that in this narrative, the British exploratory
expedition met a group of Inuit and the British offered them some tinned food. The Inuit didn't
really like the food and they also drank the British's oil and called it tasty. Thompson highlights
that this representation of the Inuit served as a marker of some important cultural differences
between the Inuit and the British.
According to John Ross, tinned food is a symbolic of the British technological superiority over
the Inuit. The refusal of the tinned food by the Inuit shows them as "disgusting brutes". The
bestial imagery was frequent in Ross' narrative whenever he describes the habits of the Inuit.
He compared them to pigs and tigers. Depicting the Inuit in this sense, John Ross engaged in a
process of "Othering".
Othering is "the processes and strategies by which a culture depicts another culture as not
only different but also inferior to itself. As a result, most of travel writings tend to "other"
other cultures. Like Ross' narratives which enables to set a clear distinction between the British
as civilized and the Inuit as savages.
Why does the "othering" happen? According to Carl Thompson, it happens because of three
reasons. First, it can be the result of a complex mixture of emotions, such as fear, desire and
envy. Second, the "othering" happens because as a traveler, if you disdain the other culture,
this somehow makes your travel writing valid and legal. Third, the traveler's portrayal of other
people or place is "ideologically motivated", seeking to justify or encourage a particular course
of action towards others. For example, John Ross' depiction of the Inuit, the British wanted the
natural resources of the Inuit, and by depicting them as savages and underdeveloped, they
can't make use of their resources, so here comes the British rule whose expertise are required
to administer the region properly.
Because of how frequent the process of "othering" happens, this gave rise to post-colonialist
scholars like Edward Said. In Said's Oriantalism, he explored western images and accounts of
the so-called "Orient". He also deconstructed the stereotypes and assumptions held by
Orientals' about the Orient as sensual and cruel in contrast to civilized west.
Carl Thompson concluded the first part of his article by explaining how travelers used travel
writings as to formulate the grounds of "Othering".
He also said that the genre itself contributed to "western imperialism" and the "colonial
discourse" that represented the other in a harmful manner for political agendas.
In the second part of his article "Strategies of Othering in Travel Writing", Thompson explains
that late 19th and early 20th centuries are o en described as the ages of "high imperialism"
However many British and French didn't regard their nations' growth as a form of imperialism.
Thompson explained why through stating an example of Stanly's bestselling book "Through the
Dark Con nent (1878)". Stanly travelled as an explorer, seeking to gather geographical and
ethnographical information, however his feedback was very useful to European colonial
projects in Eastern and central Africa. He painted a picture of Africa and Africans that seemed
to encourage and justify imperialist enterprise. He depicted Africans as savages and
cannibalisms'. He also utilized literary techniques as he wrote in past tense but he shifts to
present tense to offer a vivid reaction of events in the moments of high drama. Carl Thompson
offered an explanation of Stanly's depiction of Africans as cannibalists, he elaborates on how
Stanly came with a "preconceived" idea about Africans. This pre-conceived idea is formed in
his mind as an effect of "Science of race mixed with Social Darwinist theory" that made him
Expect meeting cannabalists in Africa.
Carl Thompson further notes that even when Stanly offers a more positive image about
Africans, he does so under a "noble savage" frame of mind. Africans are savages but noble
since they are primitive hence close to nature. Thompson then mentioned how this "noble
savage" concept gave the West the chance to claim a mission of civilizing the other. It's the
"anti- conquest" as the explorer risked his life for the pursuit of civilizing others rather than to
colonize a territory. Thompson regard Stanly's account of Africans as a formula to position
black Africans as inferior to white Europeans, and thereby help to convey a moral justification
of European intervention in African affairs.
Thompson then spoke about the "othering" strategies and Neo-colonialism; explaining that
much recent travel writing is both predicated on and generative of, an implicitly imperialist
attitude which give the Western travelers the right to roam the world and produce judgments
about its inhabitants. Travel writing is also principally concerned to "package" the world for
easy Western consumption, producing images of the Other that reassure Western readers of
not only their superiority over the rest of the world, but also of their moral right to the sense
of superiority. To this way of thinking, accordingly, travel writing remains a genre that is
enmeshed and contributive to, the neo-colonial networks of power and inequality by which
the West maintains its current global dominance.
To conclude, Thompson spoke about Other Voices contesting travel writings' colonialist
tendencies. He explains that although modern travel writing is still dominated by white
western writers, the genre increasingly admits other voices and other perspectives on the
world. Some travel writers lately came from formerly colonized cultures, and they celebrate
their "hyphenated identity" since it gives them a much broader perspective of both cultures of
the colonized and the colonizer. These writers produced "counter travel writing" to challenge
western stereotypes and attitudes.