"Salutary Anxiety" & Deconstruction/Reconstruction

On Tuesday’s in-class discussion of The Tempest, the notion of New Historicist Stephen Greenblatt’s “Salutary Anxiety”—the benefit and pleasure generated from conflict—was brought into conversation. With “The Deconstruction and Reconstruction of the ‘Self’” as the topic of my Colloquium, I have been paying particular attention to this idea of “reciprocal necessity” for struggle in relation to the books we’ve been reading for this class.
 
The first day of “Travel Classics” we addressed the question, “Why does one travel?” and the concept of seeking “authenticity” through tourism. I find myself now coming back to the same question from a different point of view—through the lens of “deconstruction and reconstruction” as an inherent trait (and cycle), present in all of mankind, and as a necessary tool in the process of self-actualization and the construction of purpose.
 
It is relatively easy to cite examples of characters manifesting their own problems throughout their journeys in fictional texts such as The Tempest and The Odyssey as the structure of narrative, generally speaking, necessitates conflict. Prospero consciously injects his daughter’s romantic relationship with anxiety/conflict to ensure the construction of a future healthy marriage. Odysseus and his men disregard prior warnings and sacrifice the oxen of Helios to their own disadvantage, pro-longing the journey home.
 
The presence of “deconstructive and reconstructive” tendencies in the personal documentation of one’s travels, however, do appear to reflect similar instances of struggle in a narrative-like fashion—Columbus’ hardships and encounters with the Indians as imperative to his own transformation is evidence of such. Even in Herodotus’ Account of Egypt, in which he rarely writes of or reflects upon his own experience traveling, we witness the pattern. Through the deconstruction of another, unfamiliar culture, Herodotus is able to reconstruct and interpret the beliefs of his own culture by comparison.
 
Each travel writer had his own motive for traveling—religion, wealth, conquest, navigation, war, discovery. However, each documented journey was also marked by a thematic consistency of struggle and conflict (internal and external) juxtaposed with the re-configuration of the author and reader’s perception, which is perhaps why these ancient texts have survived and maintained relevancy. It is human nature—the intrinsic yearning for struggle and “salutary anxiety”—that weaves all of these texts together so seamlessly and perhaps, gets at the heart of why we desire to travel today.