Under the shade of colonialism: Mary Kingsley and her Travels in West Africa

Abstract

Texts are not independent entities that are detached from their social, ideological, economic and cultural background. They are shaped by their authors who are affected by the discourse of their times. Thus, they make valuable sources in getting more information about social, political, and economic conditions of their periods. Mary Kingsley’s Travels in West Africa, as a part of colonial discourse, reflects the colonial world at the end of the Victorian period, which was rich in literature. This was a period during which British Imperialism reaches at its peak and leads to the saying, “the empire on which the sun never sets”. Travels in West Africa, as a travel narrative, serves the interests of the colonizing powers by describing the lives of the natives in West Africa and their lands sometimes using wry humour, unlike some other contemporary fictional works that depict a savage and brutal Africa as the dark continent. Michel Foucault’s theories regarding discourse and power have been used to understand the ideological formations and power relations in the mentioned travel account in the second half of the nineteenth century. Kingsley’s female narrative, with its representation of Africa, echoes the superiority of the white over the black through an embedded ideology in text.