On the “Pursuit of the Just Assessment of the Strange, Even Repulsive”. Trans- and Intranational Knowledge Circulation in John Jewitt’s Captivity Narrative

Abstract

Captivity narratives and their inherent knowledge production played a crucial role in the construction of Indigenous peoples as others. The reception of such texts in different geographical and historical spaces was often characterised by interventions that enabled their incorporation into diverging discursive formations. This makes such texts suitable sources for the analysis of knowledge circulation as a productive process. This article shows this by analysing two German adaptations of John Jewitt’s "Narrative" (1815), a highly influential North American captivity narrative. Through a comparative approach, different productive strategies of dealing with knowledge are made visible. Particular attention is paid to the specific image of the “Indianer” that was prevalent in the German context.