Presentations and Representations of Contact. James Cook and Joseph Banks at Tahiti. The Endeavour Voyage 1768-1771

Abstract

European representations of cultural contacts in the Pacific have often been examined and conceptualised within postcolonial paradigms of Self and Other but the move away from these perspectives is embodied in recent studies which address encounter from other than oppositional stances. Just one example is Frédéric Regard’s work which in British Narratives of Exploration (2009) examines the “shifting politics of intersubjectivity.”I would like to build on this growing focus on intersubjectivity and develop a broad notional framework which may account in additional ways for the complex, contradictory practice of contacts in the South seas context, particularly at Tahiti. I will attempt then to identify the ethical and egological tenor of presentations and representations of these encounters during James Cook’s first voyage (1768-1771) through the examination, in addition to the Cook and Banks journals, of a little-used resource in previous scholarship, the Endeavour log.