Postcolonial Travel Writing

Abstract

"Travel writing is an interdisciplinary genre that, in recent times, has become an important area of study. Closely linked to issues of imperialism, diaspora, multiculturalism, nationalism, identity, gender, globalization, colonialism and postcolonialism, it brings into play ideas of transculturation, the idea of the centre and the margin, border crossings, hybridity, location and displacement. Postcolonial Travel Writing, as the editors point out, is not just about “writing back.” As the editors say in the introduction, The word ‘postcolonial’ imparts potential for dislocation, disjuncture and even rupture when it is combined with a genre—travel writing—that has been critiqued within postcolonial circles. Thus, we seek to shake the reader’s complacency through the unmapping of mapped critical areas and decentring dominant theoretical territories. (6) The introduction locates travel writing within the gamut of postcolonial studies and sets out the themes and topics that travel writing entails. It includes a brief and useful discussion of Amitav Ghosh’s In An Antique Land, a text that critiques the idea of a travel narrative and “subverts the colonial travel narrative” (4)."(pg 1)