Mnemotechnics, "projection" and colonial cartography: enforcing a comprehensibility of strangeness

Abstract

I have selected this text as emblematic of my academic interests of the last twenty years or so. The justification of the choice is threefold. Firstly, with reference to what the essay is about — it anatomizes cartographic discourse in the context of the exploration of Southern Africa. Secondly, with reference to methodology — it uses both structuralist and poststructuralist insights (which is to say I believe poststructuralism, at least in some of its manifestations, to be the extension of structuralism, rather than its annihilation). Thirdly, this essay can be inscribed within a wide field of colonial/ postcolonial studies and the studies on travel writing.