Travel and Transgression: Dan Jacobson's Southern African Journey.

Jacobson maintains that, as a child growing up in Kimberley, he had invested with fantasy the landscape of the historical route from the Cape Colony to the African interior, one that is said to have registered an unconscious anxiety that there might, in fact, ‘be nothing there’. On his return as adult to this landscape, he wonders whether or not he will discover a void in the heart of the imagined plenitude. In this paper, I explore the relationship between the putative landscape of history and the landscape of fantasy, arguing that, by problematising the boundary between them, Jacobson's account of his journey along the ‘missionary road’ creates productive ambiguities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]