Chasing Tales: Travel Writing, Journalism and the History of British Ideas about Afghanistan. (Studia Imagologica) PDF
Preview Chasing Tales: Travel Writing, Journalism and the History of British Ideas about Afghanistan. (Studia Imagologica)
Chasing Tales S i tudia magologica amSterdam StudieS on cultural identity 12 Serie editors Hugo Dyserinck Joep Leerssen Imagology , the study of cross-national perceptions and images as expressed in literary discourse, has for many decades been one of the more challenging and promising branches of Comparative Literature. In recent years, the shape both of literary studies and of international relations (in the political as well as the cultural sphere) has taken a turn which makes imagology more topical and urgent than before. Increasingly, the attitudes, stereotypes and prejudices which govern literary activity and international relations are perceived in their full importance; their nature as textual (frequently literary) constructs is more clearly apprehended; and the necessity for a textual and historical analysis of their typology, their discursive expression and dissemination, is being recognized by historians and literary scholars. The series Studia Imagologica, which will accommodate scholarly monographs in English, French or German, provides a forum for this literary-historical specialism. Chasing Tales Travel Writing, Journalism and the History of British Ideas about Afghanistan Corinne Fowler Amsterdam - New York, NY 2007 Cover image: Save Me From My Friends, Nov. 30, 1878. Reproduced with permission of Punch Ltd., www.punch.co.uk Cover Design: Erick de Jong The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents - Requirements for permanence”. ISBN: 978-90-420-2262-1 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2007 Printed in the Netherlands Chasing Tales is dedicated to the memory of all the Afghans who have lost their lives, or livelihoods, in other people’s wars. I offer this book as a small contribution towards understanding the cultural forces that have shaped British ideas about Afghanistan in the hope that the history of Anglo-Afghan contact will have a slightly reduced power to shape further misunderstandings. Contents Acknowledgements Preface 1 Introduction 3 Part One: Hanging old stories on the necks of new characters1: the legacy of nineteenth-century Afghan-British encounters 25 Afghanistan in the writing of Rudyard Kipling, and Kipling in travel writing about Afghanistan 27 The problem of absentee authority: the case of Nuristan 34 Rudyard Kipling and British news media coverage of Operation Enduring Freedom 48 Mythologising Afghanistan 51 Homicidal Nuristanis 53 The Wild Westification of Afghanistan 57 Medievalising Afghanistan 64 Medievalisation in news media coverage of Operation Enduring Freedom 69 Conclusion 75 Part Two: Where ethnographers fear to tread: the counter-influence of classical ethnography on travel writing and journalism about Afghanistan 79 Ethnography as travel writing 81 The ‘crisis’ in socio-cultural ethnography 83 Ethnography about Afghanistan 86 The counter-influence of classical ethnographies on the travel writing of journalists Christopher Kremmer and Christina Lamb 89 Buzkashi as synecdochic metaphor 94 Children’s games as an explanatory metaphor 105 viii Chasing Tales Implied insight: synecdoche and journalism’s pseudo-ethnographic content 112 Travel writing, ethnography and Afghan agency in Christopher Kremmer and Christina Lamb 124 Gender, genre and authorial agency 129 Conclusion: textual negotiations and anthropological solutions 139 Part Three: Retailing insight: reporting Operation Enduring Freedom 147 Travel writing and journalism: a meeting on the road 147 Reading news media coverage in times of war 149 The absence of context in British news media coverage of Operation Enduring Freedom 164 Revisiting Afghanistan: the resurgence of nineteenth-century themes in news media coverage of Afghanistan 185 Men and women reporting Afghan women 189 Conclusion 205 Conclusion: De-mining the terrain of Afghan-British encounter 213 Endnotes 220 Appendices 1. Buzkashi in Whitney Azoy’s 2003 Buzkashi. Game and Power in Afghanistan 247 2. Veronica Doubleday’s Three Women of Herat 248 3. Margaret Mills’s Rhetorics and Politics in Afghan Traditional Storytelling 251 4. Nazif Shahrani’s The Khirghiz and Wakhi of Afghanistan Adaptation to Closed Frontiers and War 252 5. Nancy Tapper’s Politics, gender and marriage in an Afghan tribal society 254 6. Interview with Christina Lamb 256 Bibliographies: Primary 261 Secondary 263 Index 279 Acknowledgements Written with thanks for assistance, friendship and support of a number of people who deserve special thanks. To Angela Smith, who offered wise and constructive advice throughout the writing of this book. Most particularly I wish to thank Bethan Benwell, Fiona Chalamander, Fiona Darroch, Timothy Fitzgerald, Adrian Hunter, Michelle Keown, Brian MacNair and Mark Nixon for offering to read drafts or discuss ideas despite their busy schedules. Also to James Procter, for continual generosity and encouragement. I am also grateful to David Richards, Manuel Hernandez, Mohammed Naguib, Shuruq Naguib, Sahar Saba and Payam Shalchi for their willingness to discuss ideas with me. I am also extremely thankful to those who have provided valuable feedback to my conference papers, particularly Charles Forsdick, John Eade, Ludmilla Kostova, Garry Marvin, Alasdair Pettinger, Kristi Siegel, and Tim Youngs. This book would not have been possible without the financial support of the Arts and Humanities Research Board, which included an additional grant for a study trip to the British Film Institute. The study would also have been impossible to complete without the generous cooperation of the Glasgow Media Group, particularly Greg Philo, who provided access to the Group’s extensive archives for weeks on end. Finally, I am deeply grateful for the sustained support and interest of my close friends David Harley, Jane Baron, Steve Baron and my family Yvonne, Malcolm, Naomi and Jairo. Note: An earlier, shorter version of Part Two appeared as ‘Where ethnographers fear to tread: the counter-influence of ethnography on Christopher Kremmer’s The Carpet Wars (2002) and Christina Lamb’s The Sewing Circles of Herat (2002)’ in Journeys4:1, 2003.
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