Mary Louise Pratt (2) (1948–)

Like many good critical books I read during the final flurry of my Ph.D. exams, I kind of forgot about this one until I went back over my notes to write this review-- a mere four years since I read the book. Pratt has some good insights into the imperialist/scientific/capitalist discourse of the nineteenth century, showing how scientific ways of seeing and imperial ones are entangled, how the Europeans culturally constructed their colonial authority, how "a woman [...] is not to see but to be seen, or at least she is not be seen seeing" (102), and how supposedly colonial metaphors of understanding were really ones of control (if you paint a landscape, you're actually making yourself the producer, for example). I wasn't as interested in imperialism and power then as I am now; I should go back over it and see what new insights I can glean.… (mehr)

Pratt takes as her topic the interesting question of how Europeans talked to themselves in the realm of popular culture about the imperial enterprises they undertook in late 18th and the 19th centuries. The most useful aspect of the book is the selection of telling examples of travel writing as justification of imperialism, and especially the notion of cultural superiority.
Unfortunately Pratt's analysis is in the overwrought mode, typically titled "postmodernism," which infected much of the academic establishment in the 1990s. She seems not to be able to proceed more than a few pages without inventing a new analytic neologism to explain what might be more readily taken in with simple common sense.… (mehr)