Travel Worlds: Journeys in Contemporary Cultural PoliticsRaminder Kaur, John Hutnyk Zed Books, 1999 - 186 pages Everyone's Got a Traveller's Tale, but Travel Worlds tells them with a sting: African-American musicians head East for Kung-Fu kicks while paedophiles go for cheap sex pilgrimage; Western bible-bashers adopt missionary positions in India while heroic Saint George signs on as an Arab soldier in Britain; the scars of Partition mock the protocols of transit, while nomadic insurgents resist the Bangladeshi nation state with lyrical persuasion; Kula Shaker and Madonna trinketize the 'Orient' while dead tourists exchange values with travelling 'terrorists'; British Mirpuris and Black women travel back to the 'Old Country' and beyond in ways that are not quite as they seem; and ethnographers collide with tourists in the carousel of Goa's resorts. Including poetry and fiction alongside academic essays, this book refuses simplistic dichotomies of north/south and east/west and confronts head on existing conventions of writing about travel in post-colonial, literary and cultural studies. |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
Asia Asian authentic authority backpackers Bangladesh become body border boundaries Britain British capital chapter Christian colonial complex constructed contemporary context continue converts course Crispian crossing cultural death dominant East example exchange experience feel forced global hand holiday Hutnyk identity images imagined imperial India industry John journey Kula labour land less living London look Mauritius means migration Mirpur mission missionary movement narrative native Notes notion Pakistan past perhaps play political possible practice present Press privileged production question recent relations remains Road seems seen sense side social society South space stories studies suggest symbolic things thought tourists train University violence West Western women writing Yasmin young