The Problem of Travel Writing
By Rebecca Quin
Monday 19th October 2009
Language is a colonizer. To speak and read and write are impositions of language onto both the agent and the subject. If ‘Colonization is at the origin: [and] we are always already dependants of language’, is it possible to express anything without colonial force and motivation; do the things we are describing wish to be described? 1
Travel writing seems to only ever to be subjective, and is a projection of the explorer’s opinions on a personal experience of a town, city or landscape. It swings between reporting and fictional creation since the place itself is tangible, but the author’s feelings inhabit a different domain of reality. What is most surprising is the impact the place can have upon the writer, disturbing the balance of power between author and subject.
It is difficult to approach a piece of travel literature, writing or reading, without inherent prejudices that are intensified by the particular subjectivity of a travel experience. In this way, the double exchange between place and writer is complicated by opinions already formed. Crudely, a western traveller will experience the East with a cultural inheritance that renders everything strange and to some extent unnatural. In this sense, the East appears inferior to the West partly because of fear of the unfamiliar. The European and American canon of travel literature which includes predominantly white, middle-upper class authors, suffers from a kind of orientalism that happily mocks a dependence on tourism, derides the exploitative behaviour of tour companies and imposes the easy trait of cynicism onto, at that moment, a defenceless place and people.
To justify the kind of writing that travel journalism is attempting to achieve would seem to have a convoluted aim. It is important then, as with all literature and the arts in general, to imbibe the words with salty water and to go and find out for oneself. The beauty of travel is that this is more than possible, and more than encouraged by all the writers of the travel section. So go, explore, and do as travellers do. And then write about it.
Monday 19th October 2009
Language is a colonizer. To speak and read and write are impositions of language onto both the agent and the subject. If ‘Colonization is at the origin: [and] we are always already dependants of language’, is it possible to express anything without colonial force and motivation; do the things we are describing wish to be described? 1
Travel writing seems to only ever to be subjective, and is a projection of the explorer’s opinions on a personal experience of a town, city or landscape. It swings between reporting and fictional creation since the place itself is tangible, but the author’s feelings inhabit a different domain of reality. What is most surprising is the impact the place can have upon the writer, disturbing the balance of power between author and subject.
It is difficult to approach a piece of travel literature, writing or reading, without inherent prejudices that are intensified by the particular subjectivity of a travel experience. In this way, the double exchange between place and writer is complicated by opinions already formed. Crudely, a western traveller will experience the East with a cultural inheritance that renders everything strange and to some extent unnatural. In this sense, the East appears inferior to the West partly because of fear of the unfamiliar. The European and American canon of travel literature which includes predominantly white, middle-upper class authors, suffers from a kind of orientalism that happily mocks a dependence on tourism, derides the exploitative behaviour of tour companies and imposes the easy trait of cynicism onto, at that moment, a defenceless place and people.
To justify the kind of writing that travel journalism is attempting to achieve would seem to have a convoluted aim. It is important then, as with all literature and the arts in general, to imbibe the words with salty water and to go and find out for oneself. The beauty of travel is that this is more than possible, and more than encouraged by all the writers of the travel section. So go, explore, and do as travellers do. And then write about it.