The Global Politics of Contemporary Travel Writing

This book brings the 'serious' world of politics to the 'superficial' world of contemporary travel writing.

Debbie Lisle (Author)

9781107405837, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 26 July 2012

314 pages
22.9 x 15 x 2.3 cm, 0.42 kg

'At a time when it is so difficult yet so important to engage very carefully with the uneasy relation between cosmopolitan aspirations and hegemonies and colonialisms of various kinds, Debbie Lisle offers an engaging, provocative and often very acute account of how travel writings engage in border-crossings that are so much more than international.' R. B. J. Walker, Keele University, UK and University of Victoria, Canada

To what extent do best-selling travel books, such as those by Paul Theroux, Bill Bryson, Bruce Chatwin and Michael Palin, tell us as much about world politics as newspaper articles, policy documents and press releases? Debbie Lisle argues that the formulations of genre, identity, geopolitics and history at work in contemporary travel writing are increasingly at odds with a cosmopolitan and multicultural world in which 'everybody travels'. Despite the forces of globalization, common stereotypes about 'foreignness' continue to shape the experience of modern travel. The Global Politics of Contemporary Travel Writing is concerned with the way contemporary travelogues engage with, and try to resolve, familiar struggles about global politics such as the protection of human rights, the promotion of democracy, the management of equality within multiculturalism and the reduction of inequality. This is a thoroughly interdisciplinary book that draws from international relations, literary theory, political theory, geography, anthropology and history.

1. Introduction: the global imaginary of contemporary travel writing
2. Between fact and fiction: the generic limits of travel writing
3. The cosmopolitan gaze: re-articulations of modern subjectivity
4. Civilizing territory: geographies of safety and danger
5. Looking back: utopia, nostalgia and the myth of historical progress
6. Conclusion: engaging the political: contemporary travel writing and the ethics of difference.

Subject Areas: International relations [JPS], Sociology & anthropology [JH], Cultural studies [JFC], Literature: history & criticism [DS]