“Now, a plan has struck me”– itineraries, futures and ‘horizons of expectation’: Time, Space and Travels in Olive Schreiner’s Letters
Andrea Salter, University of Cambridge
Drawing on the extant letters of Olive Schreiner (1855-1920), this working paper discusses the interpretative implications of returning to a set of data when the researcher is at some temporal remove from its initial collection and interpretation. It draws on conceptual historian Reinhart Koselleck’s (1985 [1979]) concepts of ‘space of experience’ and ‘horizon of expectation’ in reengaging with Schreiner’s letters, discussing the prospective quality of Schreiner’s itinerising, her planning ahead. These features profoundly mark the exchange and reciprocal character of the letters themselves, although were not a feature foregrounded in the my previous interpretations. While the intention was to examine Schreiner’s moments of transition – when moving between her places of residence, her intellectual ideas, her friendships and more, for example – analytically what loomed large instead was her work around these, her epistolary preparations. This draws attention to what can be out of sight when ‘moments’ are focused on instead of build ups, process and the increments of unfolding circumstance. The paper comments on the researcher’s own contingent ‘spaces of experience’ during interpretation and reinterpretation, but further to this it suggests that, while the essence of ‘the trace’ may remain or indeed be reconfigured, its interpretative histories are important too.
Last updated: 30 January 2017
