Imperial Eyes: Studies in Travel Writing and Transculturation

Vituperative, scathing truths about the world they don't teach you in high school make this an excellent book for anyone who likes to uncover the scandal beneath social, economic, and political realities formed in history. Pratt's poignant and stinging language drives home every point in a very sophistocated and flowing discourse. If you haven't taken a college course in Sociology, Africana, or Latin American Studies or similar, this language may be new to you but Pratt makes it as easy as watching an on-the-edge-of-your-seat sports match.

While I understand this book presents a challenge to the reader, it is a seminal book in several fields: Mary Louise Pratt's prose is clear for a literary theorist and her vocabulary/jargon is appropriate to the subject. _Imperial Eyes_ takes the reader through several stages of European travel writing, and the effects these works have upon European representations and constructions of the "other." Pratt's strongest arguments deal with Mary Kingsley and Africa, in my personal opinion, but her work on Linneaus is important and relevant to history and to identity studies as well. As a professor, I would assign this book to an upper-division undergraduate course, and would expect students to have the ability to grapple with her argument and her prose. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to have a better understanding of the formation of modern European identity, the ideological underpinnings of colonialism, and the construction of the "other."