The strategies of seeing differently in Kathleen Jamie’s travel writing: 'Findings' and 'Sightlines'

Abstract

This article looks at the narrative techniques employed in two collections of creative non-fiction essays by the Scottish writer and poet, Kathleen Jamie. In Findings (2005) and Sightlines (2012) the narrator uses the theme of travel as a platform for expressing the liminality of natural and cultural zones. At the same time, the concept of motion and the boundless travel experience are often turned into their diminutive forms. In order to transgress the dual notions of outside/inside, human/nonhuman and the visible/unseen, Jamie employs a number of visual strategies. She introduces experimental methods of observation to free perception from the constraints of the dogmatic predictions which emerge from the automatization of sight. Jamie exposes our own illusions of what “natural” is or where exactly “nature” resides, prompting us to rethink our own position in the system. In this she often demonstrates the ethical environmental agenda of contemporary Scottish writers and exposes the intrusion of globalism into parochial zones.