Discourses of Difference: An Analysis of Women's Travel Writing and Colonialism

by Mills; Sara

• ISBN13: 9780415046299
• ISBN10: 0415046297
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1991-12-13
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

How did women write in the colonial period? Is there a specifically female genre of travel writing? Discourses of Differenceunravels the complexities of writings by British women travellers of the "high colonial" period. Sara Mills' broad-based study draws on the work of Foucault and the ideas of colonialism of such cultural theorists as Edward Said, Louise Pratt, and Gayatri Spivak to produce a new thoeretical framework for the analysis of texts written during this period. Mills argues that critics have paid insufficient attention to issues of gender, and have failed to consider the context in which texts by women were written and received. Through case studies of three women travellers--Alexandra David-Neel, Mary Kingsley and Nina Mazuchelli--Mills charts both the variety and the shared features in women's travel writing, suggesting that, although these women wrote from within the colonial system, they produced alternative accounts of the imperial presence incolonial countries.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	p. viii
Introduction	p. 1
Critical Responses to Women's Travel Writing	p. 25
Feminist Work on Women's Travel Writing	p. 27
Gender and the Study of Colonial Discourse	p. 47
Constraints on Production and Reception	p. 65
Foucault and Constraints on the Production of Text	p. 67
Constraints on the Reception of Women's Travel Writing	p. 108
Case Studies	p. 123
Alexandra David-Neel: My Journey to Lhasa (1927)	p. 125
Mary Kingsley: Travels in West Africa (1897)	p. 153
Nina Mazuchelli: the Indian Alps and How We Crossed Them (1876)	p. 175
Conclusion	p. 195
Notes	p. 200
Bibliography	p. 213
Index	p. 228
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