The Art of Encounter: Verisimilitude in the Imaginary Exploration of Interior New Guinea, 1725–1876

There is an enduring paradox in the art of writing about cross-cultural encounters: in trying to convey something of the alterity or strangeness of an encounter, writers invariably fall back upon a limited range of entirely familiar conventions, shared understandings that enable them to convey the meaning of the encounter to a like-minded or like-cultured audience. In order to be represented, difference must first be recognisable (Fothergill 1994, 40). Consequently, as Stephen Greenblatt proposes, Western narratives of encounter with native others often tell us less about those native others than they do about Western practices of representation (1991, 7): Travellers