Becoming Human: An Unending Project for the Traveler

To know who you are means knowing where you are. Your world has a center you carry with you.

- James Clifford, "Notes on Travel and Theory"


With travel comes a disorientation of placement and, simultaneously, a reorientation with the self. James Clifford discusses this aspect of travel in his “Notes on Travel and Theory,” stating that, “To know who you are means knowing where you are.” In a global context, travel brings with it the ability to cross over into new time zones and into completely new modes of living that, given the traveler is deeply grounded in his own mother culture, seem other-worldly. With this schematic in mind, it can also be considered that a crossing over takes place when an individual familiarizes himself with such terms as, “freedom” and “slavery,” as Clifford’s quotation certainly implies that to know oneself also means knowing whether one is a slave or a free-thinker. In exploring the narrative of Oladuah Equiano, this orientation roots itself in the liminal space (that is, the ambivalent middle) between literate Englishman and subordinate black man, where it facilitates Equiano’s ambition for combating slavery while at the same time casts him away from those who are enslaved. Obliquely, Mungo Park’s narrative about his travels in Africa is an example of how this liminal space can also be occupied in a different way; it is liminal space that is occupied only for a limited period of time, as it is useful as a scientific space for cultural bridging. The travel writer’s occupation of liminal identity space serves as a means of realizing his own transformations abroad, while also assessing the self and its active evolution through travel in a global context.

Olaudah Equiano

It is easy to see right away that Equiano is caught between two worlds, because he operates under two names: Oladuah Equiano, his African name, and Gustavas Vassa, his English one. His personality is also subject to duality, as it expresses great bravery and devotion for ending his own slavery on the one hand, while at the same time a frightened puniness under his superiors on the other. Equiano oscillates between these modes throughout the narrative depending on the circumstances, allowing the idea of liminal space to become tangible to his readers. In the following scene, Equiano’s voice is one of action and rage, an impressive slice of his passionate rhetoric against the institution of slavery:


When you make men slaves, you deprive them of half their virtue, you set them, in your own conduct, an example of fraud, rapine, and cruelty, and compel them to live with you in a state of war; and yet you complain that they are not honest or faithful! You stupify them with stripes, and think it necessary to keep them in a state of ignorance; and yet you assert that they are incapable of learning... (Equiano 104).


Later in the narrative, a wholly different Equiano rises to the surface, when he fails to persuade his captain to take him to Jamaica; the difference between these two passages seems to embody two entirely different men:


I was in great pain from my situation, and cried and begged very hard for some mercy, but all in vain. My tyrant in a rage brought a musquet out of the cabin, and loaded it before me and the crew, and swore that he would shoot me if I cried any more. I had now no alternative; I therefore remained silent, seeing not one white man on board who said a word in my behalf (Equiano 225).


While it seems as though such an observation might paint Equiano as a schizophrenic, the reality is that he is positioned between two worlds and simultaneously occupies both subaltern and superior identities; this stark contrasting of personality within one individual character exemplifies the contradictory nature of liminality, which is nothing less than a duality of character necessary for identifying two separate identities as one. To make some sense of how this operates in the narrative, consider the author’s sentiments towards two figures whom he regards as “friends:” Richard “Dick” Baker and an African boy (to whom Equiano fails to attribute a name). He regards the former with unbridled recognition, describing him as cool-headed and educated; Baker is no doubt a figure that is worthy of Equiano’s full attention. Thus, Vassa plays a role, implied by his voice in the text, which accommodates the figure of the white, educated individual. In the same way the aforementioned passages present contradictory tones to adequately navigate each given situation, Vassa navigates his relationship with Baker and describes this relationship in the terms that his “English” self allows. The description of Baker is presented to his readers via such strong phrases as, “... a friendship was cemented between us,” “we were inseparable,” not to mention Equiano’s shocking dismissal of the fact that Baker owned slaves (47). In contrast, Vassa writes about a black boy whom he meets while awaiting the refitting of his ship on the Isle of Wight. Unexpectedly, after already having been exposed to his diligent anti-slavery sentiments, the reader is given Equiano’s first impression of the boy when it is made out that, “[Equiano did not know] what he was about, [and] turned a little out of his way at first, but to no purpose” (71). Equiano here allows himself to forget, at least momentarily, his purpose as an African abolitionist, thereby alienating himself from his enslaved brethren for the sake of maintaining a sturdy status among the English, out of which comes the empowerment to help his oppressed brethren; herein lies the activity of Equiano’s own quandary within the shifting role of “self” in the context of travel, as it is what simultaneously allows him to fight for his people and drift away from them.

Conversely, Mungo Park manages to eschew any identity with that liminal self, as his ambitions within that role come from a much more scientific and purely observational calling. If Olaudah Equiano’s quandary with travel is his permanent situation within liminal space, Park’s is in how to genuinely fit into it for a limited period of time for the sake of cultural education. He is continuously regarded among the natives as someone worthy of attention, but not necessarily of respect. Encapsulated best by the image on page 98 of the text, Park appears to be an oddity rather than a person, and a misguided oddity at that, as a man shouts, “There is but one God, and Mohamad is his prophet.” Park is significant enough to target, but intentionally made insignificant by the native's invokation of Allah:


My arrival was no sooner observed, than the people who drew water at the wells threw down their buckets... I soon found myself surrounded by such a crowd that I could scarcely move; one pulled my clothes, another took off my hat, a third stopped me to examine my waistcoat buttons, and a fourth called out, “La illah el Allah, Mahomet rasowl allahi” (98).


Despite such horrifying experiences, Park still stays diligent in trying to become one with the new cultures that he encounters, even if just momentarily. He is devoted to his sense of humanity, as it is what is driving his expedition and his writing forward. As an outsider to these African cultures, Park remains the European, unable to penetrate the cultures of the “sable” peoples, though it is realized early on in his work that it is his writing that will allow him admittance to the lands of certain tribal peoples; it is his writing that will grant him entrance to the liminal space between European and Tribesman. He observes and appreciates, for example, that, “... all the natives of this [Konjour] part of Africa consider the art of writing as bordering on magic; and it is not in the doctrines of the Prophet, but in the arts of the magician, that their confidence is placed” (Park 41). Though Park’s writing maintains its scientific nature throughout (most observations are purely objective, detached from emotional cushioning), the narrative brushes on instances in which he comes too close, or falls too deep, into the liminality, in which cases he abandons objectivity for the sake of maintaining his spiritual and religious dimensions. This is exemplary of his own sensitivity to writing as a kind of magical device, as its utility is implemented as what seems to be a meditation to escape his distress brought on by being robbed:


The influence of religion, however, aided and supported me. I reflected that no human prudence or foresight could possibly have averted my present sufferings. I was indeed a stranger in a strange land, yet I was still under the protecting eye of that Providence who has condescended to call Himself the stranger’s friend. At this moment, painful as my reflections were, the extraordinary beauty of a small moss, in fructification, irresistibly caught my eye (180).


Needless to say, Park leans on what we can assume is a European Christian upbringing, in which he takes refuge from the unknown land around him.

Mungo Park

The moments in the narrative in which his quandary is neutralized emerge from his citations of universally human elements, such as the origins of slavery and the endearing connection between a mother and her son; it is universally human attributes that all people share that come out of occupying this position for Park. It is in such observations that Park finds that space over which cultures can be connected, if even for a stint of short-lasting time. One such example, and perhaps the strongest, comes out of Park’s situation with the boy who is shot through the leg. Through his witness of the ordeal, Park learns about how African women first and foremost teach their sons not to lie. When the boy proves to be in dire condition, his mother says out loud in grief that, “He never told a lie” (84)! Later on, spanning 109 pages later, this same thematic pops up again, which suggests that this was especially touching to Park. It is safe to say here that Oladuah Equiano and Mungo Park seem to share a similarity: a sensitivity to the maternal role. As Park glances African motherhood from the outside in, writing that, “... the maternal affection [...] is everywhere conspicuous among them,” by which he adds, “I observed in all parts of Africa that the greatest affront which could be offered to a Negro was to reflect on her who gave him birth” (194). Nowhere can this be more directly applied than to Equiano’s childhood recollections, which, considering he was writing his last edition around the time that Park was exploring the interior districts of Africa, directly resonate in terms of considering humanity the encompassing mode of liminality. Equiano recalls that, “... I became, of course, the greatest favorite with my mother, and was always with her; and she used to take particular pains to form my mind” (Equiano 24).

Wikus van der Merwe in District 9. This character is a good example of how one occupies "liminal space;" Van der Merwe is neither fully in alliance with the humans, nor with the prawns. He is stuck between these two identities because of the weight he carries as a respectable diplomat (aligning him with the humans) coupled with his identity as a natural creature (aligning him with the aliens).

But to come back to the initial definition of “liminal space” as the positioning of the self between two different identities, these broad terms like “humanity” cannot be applied in a way that is specific and applicable to one person; this is why we travel. “To know who you are means knowing where you are” is a quote that gives readers an opportunity to blast off for sure, but to a destination that becomes generalized and expanded beyond comprehension. By considering that Equiano and Park travel “through” rather than travel “to” any one destination, we are first of all recognizing that travelers such as these never “turn into” anything, but rather remain in a constant state of becoming; secondly, we are affirming each of their abilities to travel as individuals that are subject to the classic Said modeled“us/them” dichotomy, while also their abilities to situate their conscious psyches in the pocketed space between. It is in this space that the self undergoes the internalization of both “us” and “them” simultaneously, thus only allowing the explorer to pinpoint “where” he is at a given moment, not “who.”



Works Cited
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- Equiano, Olaudah. The Interesting Narrative. The Modern Library, 2004. First published 1789.

- Park, Mungo. Travels in Africa. FrontList Books. First published 1799.