The Legacy of Colonial Discourse

After reading chapter 6 of Carl Thompson’s “Travel Writing,” one can see that colonialism has left an impact upon travel writing. During the eighteenth, nineteenth, and even within the twentieth century, many writers from imperialist countries wrote of their experiences and travels within non-imperial countries. In this, they would often portray themselves as being more “civilized” than that of the people they would encounter by highlighting the differences between the two cultures. The term for this is referred to as “othering” (Thompson 132). Within the concept of “othering,” there are two senses of what the concept means. As described by Thompson, “In a weaker, more generalized sense, “othering” simply denotes the process by which the members of one culture identify and highlight the differences between themselves and the members of another culture” (Thompson 132). In this sense of the word, it is not necessarily a bad thing, but rather can provide a contrast between two different cultures and show to the readers the many different ways that people go about life around the word. Using this particular sense of the word, Thompson argues that “All travel writing must, arguably engage in the act of othering in the first sense” (Thompson 133). However, in the other sense of the word, as Thompson states, “In a stronger sense, however, it has come to refer more specifically to the process and strategies by which one culture depicts another culture as not only different but also inferior to itself (Thompson 132 and 133). In this stronger sense, many writers unfortunately used this to propagate racist imperial beliefs about other cultures. While the use of this second sense of the word is not as overtly prevalent in more modern travel writing, both senses can still be found and is part of the colonial legacy left upon travel writing.

Within Daniel Everett’s travelogue “Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes,” Everett both draws upon and resists this aspect of “othering” in the legacy of colonial discourse upon travel writing. An example of this can be seen through a harrowing encounter Everett experienced with the death of a sickly baby he decided to care for after the mother died shortly after birth. Despite his belief that he could save the baby, the other villagers decided from their cultural beliefs that it was in the baby’s best interest to die and killed the child. Everett reflects upon the situation by stating “The more I thought about the incident, though, the more I came to realize that the Pirahas, from their perspective, did what they thought was best. They weren’t simply being cruel or thoughtless. Their views of life, death, and illness are radically different from my Western ideas” (Everett 97). Rather than deride the culture of the Pirahas for this act that many would consider to be irredeemably cruel, Everett explains the situation through explaining that the act came from the difference in culture. As Everett further states on this “In a land without doctors, with the knowledge that you have to get tough or die, with much more firsthand experience with the dead and dying than I had ever had, the Pirahas could see death in someone’s eyes and health before I could. They felt certain that this baby was going to die. They felt it was suffering terribly” (Everett 97). Instead of casting judgement upon the Piraha people for doing this, as he easily could have done, he instead looked upon the incident as being a situation that exposed the difference between his and the Piraha’s culture. From this example, one can see how Everett draws upon the legacy of colonial discourse through using the weaker and more generalized sense of “othering,” but resists it through his decision to not use the stronger sense of it.