Page - 16 - in >mcs_lab> - Mobile Culture Studies, Volume 2/2020

16 Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 6 2o20 (Travel) Birgit Englert, Sandra Vlasta | Travel Writing and publication to occur almost simultaneously. In this regard, however, a reverse tendency can also be observed: many of those who first publish their travelogues online later also publish a revised version in the form of a book, often a hardcover and/or proper coffee table book (cf. Topping 2019; see also the reviews of recent publications by the Bell Collective and Franz Paul Horn in this special issue). In ‘On the (Im)possibility of Writing a Travelogue, or Dimensions of Polygraphy in Manuel João Ramos “Ethiopian Travelogue” (2018)’, Birgit Englert discusses the work of the Portuguese anthropologist, essayist, and illustrator Manuel João Ramos, who refuses to take photographs of his travels and instead turns to drawing, taking the time to observe his surroundings and to interact with those whose curiosity his activity invariably provokes. Ramos sees in drawing a less imperialist form of representation, and in sketching a means of dealing with the limitations he experiences when he tries to convey his travel experiences to others in words (whether spoken or written). His sketches thus function not merely as illustrations of the written travelogue but as ‘texts’ in their own right, as Englert argues. She recommends that we consider the text-visual relation in Ramos’s work as a form of ‘internal polygraphy’ insofar as the text and the visual constitute two accounts of a journey that can be read on their own. Further dimensions of polygraphy, a concept that refers to the practice of re-writing accounts of a single journey, are also discussed with regard to Ramos’s book, which was originally published in Portuguese in the year 2000, re-published in a revised version in 2010, and translated into English (and again revised, especially with regard to the graphics) in 2018. Sketches are also at the core of another genre in which manifold and stylistically highly diverse travel accounts have been published in the past three decades: comics/graphic novels. Sigrid Thomsen uses the perspective of mobility to analyse how movement and uncertainty are navigated in Sarah Glidden’s autobiographical comic/graphic novel How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less, in which Glidden depicts her travels around Israel, which she under- took as part of a Birthright trip offered to young Jews in the diaspora. Thomsen argues that Glidden depicts two kinds of mobility: first, she portrays her own body, and those of others, travelling to and within Israel. Second, Glidden’s avatar, Sarah, moves from a place of certainty regarding the situation in Israel/Palestine to one of uncertainty, ambiguity, and doubt. In her analysis, Thomsen reveals ‘how the images and the text come together to show this doubled mobility, focusing on the panel structure (including the space of the gutter), the use of water- colours, and specific affordances of the medium of comics such as fantastical elements and playing with size’ (Thomsen: 155). The political context and questions of representation and authenticity also take centre stage in the contribution by Ana de Almeida, Jan-Hendrik Müller, and Christian Wimplinger. Their article focuses on the coverage of the 1974 peaceful Carnation Revolution in Portugal in the works of German intellectuals. The latter documented their experiences in journals and films, using, among others, the genre of tableau. On the other hand, the analysis brings to the fore the pictures of the revolution provided by these intellectuals and highlights the differences between the 1968 protests and the approaches taken in the actual revolution. Ultimately, analysis of the relation between text and image in travel writing may also be undertaken by applying mobile methods such as psychogeography and literary mapping. In ‘Journeying the Page’, Tanja Kapp uses a psychogeographical approach to analyse the relation