Volume: 4  Number: 1  Page: 1–18

Islanders, Tourists and Psychosis. Doing Time in Beatrice Grimshaw's Travel Brochures

Clare McCotter Department of Languages & Literature, University of Ulster, Northern Ireland, UK

This paper is an exploration of the ways in which temporality influences constructions of otherness. A position in time and space, subjectivity is the fusion of past-present-future. Attempts therefore to posit a group of people as all that I am not invariably require a realignment of time. Frequently depicted as if rooted in a disconnected present tense, the Other has rarely ever been described as a temporally complex being. Within touristic discourses this has resulted in a variety of binary opposites: tourist/traveller, guest/host island/mainland, and also psychotic/non-psychotic. While recognising the importance of differentiation in the construction of identity, the aim of this paper is the destabilisation of these polarities. This will not be done by attempting to negate difference, but rather by trying to locate areas of sameness through an engagement with temporality. I will begin by challenging the traveller/tourist dichotomy as it is delineated in Beatrice Grimshaw's South Sea travel brochures (1910/1911). This discussion will be informed by Freud's work on the death drive. Remaining with Grimshaw's texts I will then examine representations of Pacific Islanders as temporally bounded constructs, constructs which bear more than a fleeting resemblance to western conceptions of island topographies. Following an analysis of Fredric Jameson's ruminations on psychosis, and the way in which his ideas have been associated with touristic experience. I will conclude with a consideration of host/guest relations.

Keywords: binary, brochure, death drive, Pacific, psychosis, temporality

© 2006 C. McCotter

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