Agency and Identity in the Contact Zone: the Travel Writer and the Native in J.m. Synges The Aran Islands

Abstract

This study examines J.M. Synge's prose travel text The Aran Island, first published in 1907. It uses the tools of traveling theory proffered by scholars like Mary Louise Pratt as well as some of the post-colonial theory of Edward Said and Frantz Fanon. This study finds that in The Aran Islands, Synge enters into a negotiation with the subjects of his study where both the traveler and the native are active in forming the other. Synge frames the natives as primitive yet not barbaric or savage, and noble for their deep connection to nature and representation of a world fast disappearing. The natives, on the other hand, successfully confront Synge in a number of ways. They compromise his cultural superiority as the wealthy traveler, and also challenge him as an educationally and technologically fluent member of the Irish landholding elite.