Travel and ethics: theory and practice

Paper presented at Society for French Studies conference at Swansea University, July 5-7 2010. Travel and its literary representation act as a barometer for measuring our changing relationship with the modern world, and for addressing its new technologies, global crises and challenges. In spite of its often-derided associations with escapism and frivolity, contemporary French-language travel writers continue to assert the ethical value of travel literature. This new generation of voyageurs engagés underline the potential of this undervalued literary genre to serve as a means of self-critique and a vehicle for change. This paper will examine the ethical imperative at the heart of three recent travel narratives which draw attention to key memorialist, environmental and educational concerns. In L’Axe du loup (2004), Sylvain Tesson retraces the route from Siberia to India taken by prisoners who escaped from the Gulag in 1942, and attempts to validate their testimony; and traveller-teacher Kristelle Savoye visits school classes across three continents in À l’école du monde (2009). This paper will offer a comparative analysis of the portrayal of the traveller-activist, and will consider whether such contemporary forms of commitment should be characterised as humanitarian in contrast to the more overtly political journeys undertaken by earlier twentieth-century writers. These narrator-travellers reinscribe travel with a sense of travail, both through the global concerns they highlight and their search for alternative means of perception through decelerated journeys on foot, by bike, on horseback and camel. The paper will explore the tensions created between the individualistic or exclusive nature of these journeys by solitary travellers on the one hand and their desire for inclusivity and cross-cultural exchanges on the other. Finally, it will question whether travel literature’s aesthetic features are in fact at odds with its ethical credos.

Literatura e Viagens Pós-coloniais, 2002

Postcolonial Text, 2011

Tourism Culture & Communication, 2009

Thisstudy contributes to the ongoing discussion regarding the power and privilege undergirding tourism discourse by examining the representational dynamics of deviance in tourism destinations known in social discourse as consequence-free settings; specifically, Las Vegas, New Orleans, Amsterdam, and Bangkok. Understanding language as constitutive of social reality, this study employed techniques associated with textual analysis to examine feature travel articles published in four of the areas' most recognized and circulated travel and tourism magazines: Travel + Leisure, Condé Nast Traveler, National Geographic, and National Geographic Traveler. Four main narrative emphases are proposed (Legitimized Deviance, A Voyeur's Paradise, Wholesome Deviance, and The Deviant Host) and followed by a theoretical explanation aiming to trace out questions, as well as comment, on travel writing's "ways of seeing" the world.

Ilha do Desterro A Journal of English Language, Literatures in English and Cultural Studies, 2001

Annals of Tourism Research, 2006

This study analyzes travel writing in terms of the relevant textual features contributing to intercultural communication representations in such stories. A textual analysis of the best-selling series The Best American Travel Writing 2001 was conducted. Findings suggest that ''best'' describes intercultural communication as mostly occurring when authors seek to expound upon their immediate needs and experiences. Moreover, this analysis suggests that representations rely on frequent comparisons between the host and American societies, as well as on patriarchal discourses where a normative masculinity is poised against a constructed femininity. The sociocultural significance and implications of the findings are discussed by situating travel stories within a wider discussion regarding American ideology.

Travel Writing has played a remarkable role in instilling colonial consciousness among the adventurers and explorers which ultimately paved the way for the beginning of imperialism and establishment of colonies in various parts of the world. The conceived space is translated into reality in the process. Ideas are being rendered by literature and implementation of the enterprise is done by the explorers and the colonisers to various resourceful but exotic lands around the world. Now travel and its documentation has been a continuous process undergoing different phases of its development from time to time.While the first phase of European colonial travel writing was characterised by a curiosity about the 'unknown', gradually it turned into a vision of world geography in the seventeenth century which asserted the centrality of Europe, specially of England in dauntless imperialistic manner. Travel, however, paves the way for cultural interchange among the conflicting people and out of their negotiations new equations of life are being created. Pratt's theory of transculturation thus talks about the absorption of dominant ideologies by the subordinates. Thus the present paper discusses the gradual development of travel writing since ancient age with its upsurge in nineteenth century, the role of women travel writers and particularly the contribution of this genre in generating and perpetuating colonial mindset followed by the vigorous colonial adventures in various far-flung areas of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Postcolonial theory has, in-fact, viewed travel and travel literature with their multidisciplinary connotation from a different angle of vision in which different postcolonial concepts of liminality and ambivalence also contribute their part.