Visualising waiting territories: the case of Louis de Boccard

Abstract

In this chapter, we approach explorers ― as well as their voyages, their stance of authority and the intersubjective ‘contact zones’ they represented ― from the perspective of waiting territories. Some groups experienced waiting territories as territories of uncertainty and as places where they lost control of their destiny: this was the case with indigenous Americans. Marginalised and undermined by the gaze that European travellers and scientists cast on them, they seemed trapped between their mobile ― nomadic ― past and the unknown future that awaited them once their land was taken from them. For other groups, such as the travellers and scientists who were responsible for the narratives that sidelined Native Americans, these same waiting territories were places of (re-)discovery and expectation.