Echotourism and masculinity: the African travelogues of Tim Butcher, H.M. Stanley, and Graham Greene

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article analyses the gendered dynamics of narratives that re-enact earlier travel narratives, a subgenre of travel writing that it terms “echotourism”. After discussing the implications of this terminology, the article turns to the work of Tim Butcher, whose Blood River re-enacts H.M. Stanley's Through the Dark Continent, and Chasing the Devil does the same with Graham Greene's Journey Without Maps. In both his texts, Butcher travels through parts of Africa to recover his sense of toughness and agency, qualities that he sees in both Stanley and Greene. However, Greene proves a problematic model of masculine agency, and Butcher must bring Journey Without Maps to bear on his own travels in shifting and surprising ways. Ultimately, Butcher's attempt to draw upon Greene to celebrate a rugged masculinity actually reveals how contingent and complicated his performance of that masculinity actually is.