Philosophy Matters: Interpretive Communities, Travelogues and Colonialism

Abstract

Travel writing has been the mainstay for those dissatisfied with the mere ‘fictive insubstantiality’ offered by imaginative literary products. Travelogues were privileged for their truth value over their fictional counterpart that dealt in imaginative concoctions. Accordingly, the readers of travelogues who set great store by their objectivity, chose to view imaginative literature, despite all their alleged literary merits, as purveyors of untruth, and hence, at best, only to be tolerated. A tinge of overt or covert condescension towards such mental exercise could be generally detected in the illustrious line of votaries of truth from the Platonic era. However, a more fundamental question addressed here is about the status of truth value ascribed to travelogues, and to see whether they are any less constructed than the avowed fiction or indeed, any writing. It may be seen, instead, that the ‘truth’ of travelogues is the handiwork of interpretive communities. Stanley Fish demonstrates the way meaning is constructed by active interpretive communities in literary works. However, the process of truth construction may be seen as no different in the allegedly objective writings as well.