English

This essay examines the narratives told through key touristic elements of Cape Town's Robben Island Museum and District Six Museum, such as guided tours and the preservation and/or recreation of space. Specifically, my argument is concerned with the kinds of ethical relationships that might emerge between a visitor/audience and the stories told within these museums. Focusing the curatorial goals of the museum in memorializing a specific history, and the kinds of stories visitors expect, I provide a phenomenological reading of these museums to argue that they lay a foundation for an ethical encounter, though the more fluid narrative of District Six Museum is ultimately more successful. Using Avishai Margalit's The Ethics of Memory and Emmanuel Levinas's face to face encounter, I analyze how these museums invite visitors to join what Margalit calls a "community of caring."

This essay tries to appropriate and actualize Said's critique of Orientalism and Mitchell's conception of the ideology of the imperial landscape in an attempt to show how the fantasy of Tibet as the Other was constructed by the narrative and visual technologies of imperialist ideology in the service of its own interests. The essay argues that both the mode of conquest and that of being conquered by the Tibetan landscape have misrepresented and distorted the nature of Tibet, thus actually reflecting the effect of imperialist hegemonic power over the indigenous people.