MICHEUNE ADAMS


from the word as stone artefacts, for example are types of texts, and "both
must be read" because "history is indivisible" (56). Clearly, Kincaid is
allegorically representing the discrepancy between scribal and oral cultures.
The dichotomizationn" of these cultures results from the view in the West
that documenting information in writing makes it more valid and transmitting
culture verbally is an inadequate means of communicating anything
important (56). This tale reveals that the primacy of the scribal is a
misconception. Ovando creates documents that will aid him in the imperialist
project: his intellectual theories and his geographical delineations are put
on paper to validate his bullying and his theft. On the other hand, when the
Amerindians speak, their words are "delivered in a heartfelt and sorrowful
and earnest way" (81). Their thoughts are grounded in a culture that is
reflective and respectful of all life forms. Held up against the natives' plain
and thoughtful speech, the documents of the West are empty and pointless.
 Ovando also creates a map upon which the "lands and the seas were
painted in the vile colours of precious stones just ripped from their muddy
home" (77). Here, McClintock's reading of the semiotic significance of the
map is validated, for the conquistador believes that creating the map,
recording the location of various lands, gives him license to claim them.
According to McClintock,

 Map-making became the servant of colonial plunder, for the knowledge
 constituted by the map both preceded and legitimised the conquest of
 territory. The map is a technology of knowledge that professes to capture
 the truth about a place in pure scientific form, operating under the guise of
 scientific exactitude and promising to retrieve and reproduce nature exactly
 as it is. As such, it is also a technology of possession, promising that those
 with the capacity to make such perfect representations must also have the
 right of territorial control. (28)

The capacity to map territory ensured one the right to claim and even to
plunder it.4
 Kincaid also raises the issue of the West's insistence on progress to the
detriment of the planet. Ovando declares to his own reflection "My sheer
might!" and these words devastate the edenic world the Aboriginals have
known. The narrator describes the uprooting of trees, conflagrations that
cannot be put out, drought. The birds and animals react in alarm (79). The


4 Kincaid's My Garden (Book) considers how conquistadors such as Columbus,
Cortez, and De Balboa assumed that by naming and mapping the foreign territories
they reached, they earned the right to claim them; "to name is to possess" (114).
Their legacy to the imperialists who succeeded them was the right to continue to
view foreign lands as property and to divide the globe according to their own design
for centuries.