Abstract
As has now become a familiar image in Hope’s writings, once again ttie idea of looking at a society from the position of an outsider and an exile forms the central theme of Darkest England (1996). In this satirical novel, the tradition of nineteenth-century travel writings set in a colonial context is reversed, undermined, and then remarkably recreated to portray the present-day manifestation of encounters and relations between (black) Africa and the (white) West. Presenting the (fictional) journals of a Khoisan leader, David Mungo Booi, within a dynamic frame of reference to classical colonial texts by, among others, Livingstone and Stanley. Hope writes a new travel report. This essay discusses how, by the reversal of point of view, a change in time and space, and creating a satirical mood, the colonizer and the colonized are interchanged and the original texts are evoked to be rewritten. The notions of Self/Other, colonial /(post-)colonial and primitive/civilized are placed in new and disturbing contexts, adding to the complex structure of this fascinating text.
Highlights
The best known phrase in nineteenth-century travel writing is Henry Stanley’s rhetorical question: “Dr Livingstone, I presume?” - a phrase dating from 1871, and one to which many facetious and trivialized meanings have been attached ever since
Inhethwesaes tgwivoenfraamitnogrnppaartrsceal containing two notebooks written by one David Mungo Booi, of what he did with these notes and how he disposed of Bool's tattered hat which was included in the package of books
Hope’s satiric adherence to this kind of rhetoric is very obvious. Both Spurr and Mary Louise Pratt (1992) refer to the rhetorical convention based on the visual mastery of a scene, the “monarch of all I survey” gesture, typical of all Victorian explorers and especially dear to Henry Morton Stanley (Pratt, 1992:201; Spurr, 1993: 17). This surveillance implied that the explorer, filled with self-satisfied pride in the advantages and innate superiority of Western ways, saw Africa as it might become under colonial rule
Summary
The best known phrase in nineteenth-century travel writing is Henry Stanley’s rhetorical question: “Dr Livingstone, I presume?” - a phrase dating from 1871, and one to which many facetious and trivialized meanings have been attached ever since. Withiin the context of its historical and geographical origin, the social and political status of the original speaker and the one he addressed, and because of the cultural and ideological echoes resonating through the ensuing century, these four words encapsulate the tone, attitude and perspective which characterise colonial histoiy and suggest some of the complex issues surrounding postcolonialism today. In 1996 CDharriksetospt hEenrgHlaonpde,, aa SteoxutthwAhifcrihcainnveexrptsattrhiaetewlihvoinleg ilniteLroanrydotnra, dpituiobnlish- eda tradition which can be called “the rhetoric of Empire” (Spurr, 1993) ebpooitok,mIinzeDdarbkyesSttAanfrliecya’s(1w8r9it0in).gHaonpde’sesipnevecriasliloynthisatbaosfehdisonmtohset sfaamtiroicuasl recreation of voyages and discoveries, of barbarians and colonizers, heathens and missionaries as seen through the eyes of a modern day Dr Livingstone
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