Matches in UGent Biblio for { ?s ?p Focusing on Johan De Boose’s travelogues on Poland (2004) and Croatia (2009), this chapter examines to what extent the author manages to escape the prevalent model of the ‘colonial gaze’ and the ‘imperial eyes’ through which the (usually white male) cultivated European traveler since the Enlightenment has looked at other cultures, overseas as well as on the European continent. Notwithstanding the moderate and open-minded way in which De Boose approaches the New Europe, the question remains to which extent his discourse echoes old Eurocentric patterns of thinking. To answer this question, we scrutinize De Boose’s books on Poland and Croatia on three levels. First of all, in which sense does the narrative template (mixing fiction and non-fiction) he uses reveal the ambition to map, and, in doing so, to control the region he is visiting? Secondly, what is the role and scope of historical fictionalizing in De Boose’s travel writing? Finally, what does his work tell us about the construction and transfer of images of the Other in what Mary Louise Pratt calls ‘the contact zone’ between traveler and travelee? Does the traveler impose his hegemonic view upon the traveled region, e.g. by selecting certain interlocutors and interviewees, choosing specific destinations, discussing particular topics? The article puts forward that De Boose’s zeal to look for traces of a multicultural past and his predilection for hybrid identities turns him into a postmodern cosmopolitan traveler relentlessly questioning national identities and hard-cut boundaries between cultures. However, the characteristics inherent to the genre of travel writing, combined with the author’s proclivity for romantic metaphors, almost inevitably open up the way to stereotypical images of the Other, however well-polished his texts may be.. }
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- aggregation abstract "Focusing on Johan De Boose’s travelogues on Poland (2004) and Croatia (2009), this chapter examines to what extent the author manages to escape the prevalent model of the ‘colonial gaze’ and the ‘imperial eyes’ through which the (usually white male) cultivated European traveler since the Enlightenment has looked at other cultures, overseas as well as on the European continent. Notwithstanding the moderate and open-minded way in which De Boose approaches the New Europe, the question remains to which extent his discourse echoes old Eurocentric patterns of thinking. To answer this question, we scrutinize De Boose’s books on Poland and Croatia on three levels. First of all, in which sense does the narrative template (mixing fiction and non-fiction) he uses reveal the ambition to map, and, in doing so, to control the region he is visiting? Secondly, what is the role and scope of historical fictionalizing in De Boose’s travel writing? Finally, what does his work tell us about the construction and transfer of images of the Other in what Mary Louise Pratt calls ‘the contact zone’ between traveler and travelee? Does the traveler impose his hegemonic view upon the traveled region, e.g. by selecting certain interlocutors and interviewees, choosing specific destinations, discussing particular topics? The article puts forward that De Boose’s zeal to look for traces of a multicultural past and his predilection for hybrid identities turns him into a postmodern cosmopolitan traveler relentlessly questioning national identities and hard-cut boundaries between cultures. However, the characteristics inherent to the genre of travel writing, combined with the author’s proclivity for romantic metaphors, almost inevitably open up the way to stereotypical images of the Other, however well-polished his texts may be.".