A Problem of Legibility. British Travellers in Paraguay (1852-1881)
Keywords:
Paraguay, Travel Writing, Civilisation, 19th Century, Triple Alliance WarCopyright (c) 2024 Philip D. Webb
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Abstract
This article comprises a reading of ten British authors who visited and wrote about Paraguay between the mid nineteenth-century and the decade following the War of the Triple Alliance (1864-1870) to identity some of their common discursive features and problematise the use of this corpus, written from the viewpoint of the imperial subject during the heyday of European colonialism, as a means to understand Paraguayan history. The breadth, richness and literary merit of this collection of texts is unquestionable, but it is also necessary to know their limitations and biases, and to ask ourselves whether any given text tells us more about the reality it describes or the ideology of the person who describes it. The country’s shifting conditions and the subjectivities of each author are reflected in their diverse perspectives regarding the Paraguayan people’s level of development and capacity for civilisation, which are sometimes contradictory and frequently exclude the voices of the Paraguayans themselves, a problem of legibility that invites to think about how and with what precautions we must work if we are to take advantage the incalculable historical value that these sources have.
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PRENSA BRITÁNICA
The Graphic
Highgate Express
The Kidderminster Shuttle
London Illustrated News
PRENSA PARAGUAYA
El Diario
La Reforma