What does it mean to represent blacks in XIX Century travel writing? This is the essential proposed question in order to explore the topic. In order to find answers to this question, I will attempt to examine Charles Darwin’s travel accounts (1809-1882). This work examines the way in which black communities are portrayed as well as the discursive devices the writer resorts to in order to narrate them. Throughout the study, I will show how the traveler, in his hasty attempt to interpret and describe these populations in his own community, describes and reconstructs them by means of certain recurring strategies of representation mediated by European imagery.The mechanisms that the writer uses to depict the Otherness reveal an ideology imbued with inconsistencies, ambiguities and contradictions that mimic colonial discourse. I will try to analyze this rhetoric by using the theoretical guidelines proposed by David Spurr in his book The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing and Imperial administration and Mary Louise Pratt in Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. Some theoretical key concepts are taken into account throughout this essay in order to classify the scenarios in which cultural encounters take place. Since Darwin is supposed to be an intellectual authority, particular attention is paid to the existing relation that comes into play between his discursive ideas and the role that they play in contributing to think black identity and cultures.

The manipulation of the image of Afro-descendants in XIX century travel narratives accounts for certain ideological practices. This essay does not only reflect on the representation of the Other. It also seeks to explore the ambivalence that occurs in the contact zones as well as discursive strategies used to depict Otherness. The recurrent portrayals of these populations turn out to be revealing because of all the ideas, attitudes and prejudice they convey. How do these rhetorical mechanisms come into play and what tensions do they inscribe? We will attempt to reflect on these issues through the exploration and comparison of travel accounts written by four travelers: Alexander Von Humboldt (1769-1859), Flora Tristán (1803-1844), Charles Darwin (1809-1882) and Miguel Cané (1851-1905). Keywords: Ambivalence, Travel literature, Post-colonialism, Identity, Representation, Race, Diaspora.