Ethical, Gender Implications of Considering Travel Writing as a Form of Cultural Interpretation - Coursework Example

 Can travel writing bridge the cultural divide between those who represent and those represented? Discuss with reference to the ethical, gender, and genre implications of considering travel writing as a form of cultural interpretation. Table of Contents 1. Introduction 2. Ethical implications of considering travel writing as a form of cultural interpretation 3. Gender implications of considering travel writing as a form of cultural interpretation 4. Genre implications of considering travel writing as a form of cultural interpretation 5. Conclusions 6. References Can travel writing bridge the cultural divide between those who represent and those represented? 1. Introduction Travel writing is a genre that has been around from times immemorial - from ancient Egyptians in 3000 BC to Chinese traveller Hiuen Tsang who wrote about the “high-minded and upright people of India”, to Marco Polo who narrated his chronicles in Il Milione (Casson, 1994). It has helped fill the gaps in history where archaeologists failed, and it has provided the anthropological view of the exotic and remote civilizations to the distant reader sitting in the comfort of his home. With the advent of globalization and liberalization there has been a massive increase in tourism and travel activity, and simultaneously, there has also been an increase in the number of people who are eager to lap up travel literature (Holland and Huggan, 2000). Travel writings work to provide useful and interesting information to the reader and may create a desire to experience the destinations. Travel writings may also bring out greater insight and understanding about the world and its inhabitants and create a more tolerant outlook for the readers to adopt. However, several researchers and critiques have highlighted the fact that most of the travel writing available today falls in a distinct category of serving the white, male dominated middle class heterosexual reader class (Holland and Huggan, 2000; Pratt, 2007; Porter, 1991; and Spurr, Fish and Jameson, 1993). This implies that all travel writing is tainted with the perspective of a Western cultural outlook, and that there is little scope for the authentic and pure representation of those who are written-about to emerge. The current paper therefore intends to assess if travel writing can actually bridge the gap between those who are represented and those who write about them. It will answer questions like “Is it possible that travel writers are able to take into account their own ethical and gender related orientations and present an unbiased picture of those that they are writing about?” and also, “as a genre, can travel writing be seen as a form of cultural interpretation?”. The methodology used for the current paper is to discuss the work of various scholars and researchers, who have reviewed travel writing and commented on its applicability as an instrument of cultural interpretation. 2. Ethical implications of considering travel writing as a form of cultural interpretation As mentioned in the introduction, several scholars have assessed the travel writings over the years and have arrived at the conclusion that most of the travel write-ups are Western oriented and written with the mindset of ‘us’ Vis a Vis the explored culture. In a study conducted by Santos (2006), the series The Best American Travel Writing 2001 was analysed by the researcher. This series contains an expository of travel writings from across the world and is presented with the understanding that these travel stories comprise of the best and most popular writings of the genre. However, according to Santos, a textual analysis conducted on the stories contained in this volume found that they were all written from a very personal, narrator’s point of view. So, instead of being objective interpretation o f the observations, the writers wrote with their own backgrounds, biases and clichés seeping in the narratives. The travel writing presented here is therefore an interpretation of the culture as per the Western ideology. Similarly, Islam (1996) proposes that authentic and unbiased travel writing can only be undertaken by people who take on nomadic travel – move with an open mind and simply imbue and reflect the culture of the places that they visit or write about. The sedentary travel, undertaken by a traveller who never really opens up the frontiers of his minds even though he or she covers great distances, is accused of not being credible enough to contribute to travel writing (Islam, 1996). There is a large amount of literature available that criticises the travel writing, especially undertaken by the Western writers, as imperialistic and coated with the stereotypes and misconceptions of their own cultures (Speake, 2003; Scott, 2004, Isam, 1996). It is therefore not fit to assume with reliability that the travel writings should be taken as accurate representation of the people who are represented. 3. Gender implications of considering travel writing as a form of cultural interpretation Gender issue related to travel writing can be discussed from a dual perspective. One is that how the different gender writers portray their travel experience and other is the approach to writing or the style of writing that the authors adopt towards females. The latter is found to be affected by the fact that most travel writers adopt a patriarchal approach where a ‘normative masculinity is poised against a constructed femininity’ (Santos, 1991: 624). Travel writers have often objectified women from oriental cultures or presented them as licentious and of low morals, or exalted them as domicile and fragile creatures. This shows that there is an inherent drawback in assuming that travel writing could be an accurate representation of the culture. Also, a review of women travel writers by Siegel (2004) found that there are distinct differences in the way female writers narrate their interpretations of their travel related experiences. These differences were more explicit in the early European women travellers and writers like Mary Montagu and Florence Dixie, and were related to the writers desire to present themselves as upright ladies not blatantly involved with or overjoyed with their travel experiences Siegel (2002). Women writers have been believed to indulge in using a comparative tone in their writing of other cultures, and this comparison is more critical of their own cultures (Mills, 1993), which is in contrast to that of the imperialistic stance taken by white male travel writers. Though there is little evidence to show that female writers are more romantic or less goal-oriented (Siegel, 2004), there is definitely the issue of credibility that they have to fight for. Women writers have been found to downplay their adventures and resort to euphemism so that they do not break away from the respectable female stereotype that the society respects (Grewal, Fish and Jameson, 1996). Additionally, it is seen that female writers tend to distance themselves from their other culture subjects in a bid to maintain their own identity or to conform to the imperialistic ideas of superiority (Siegel, 2004). Travel accounts and writings therefore are seen to be influenced by gender and hence cannot be strictly considered as an objective interpretation of culture. 4. Genre implications of considering travel writing as a form of cultural interpretation Another issue with travel writing being used as a form of cultural interpretation is the debate about what does the genre actually include (Hooper and Youngs, 2004). Short, transitory materials like travel books, travel guides, travel magazines etc. form a part of travel writing though they are written with the objective of disseminating information about the destinations and are backed by the desire of encouraging or promoting tourism. Next, there are the travelogues and chronicles of independent travellers, who may be historians like William Dalrymple and Jan Morris , or novelists like Bill Bryson and , Paul Theroux, or essayists like V. S. Naipaul and Rebecca West. This type of writing is criticized again in terms of the limitations of the author to understand and interpret the culture of in an unbiased or objective manner (Cliffard and Marcus, 1986). These literary travel writers present the writings in a narrative form and story like form, which is again played out with the need to sell the book and make it more interesting to the audiences. Next, the anthropologists who may present their own work in the form of culture and travel writings. This form of travel writing is layered with what the ethnographers own social and political perceptions are and how best he or she is able to represent the facts in writing. This shows that the orientation or the goal of the writer influences how the other culture is represented – weather it is embellished to sell or toned down to conform to the preconceived notions of the readers. This again makes travel writing unfit to be categorized as an accurate medium of culture interpretation. 5. Conclusions The above discussion shows that travel writing is not hailed as a cultural interpretation of those who are being written about. A closer look at the travel literature reveals that in most cases the writings are tainted with the perspective of the people who are writing them. These perspectives are further developed by the writers own personal, ideological and ethical orientations about different cultures, ethnicity, gender or other issues. This is apparent in the majority of travel texts that have been written by the Western travellers in the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. However, travel writing is still more geared towards the ‘Western explorers’ point of view of the ‘other cultures’. The travel writers are also influenced by their own end-objectives – they may be writing to sell, to reinforce or rebel against a political stance or to show their literary skills – and in each case, their interpretations of the culture may be influenced. This complication may be present in addition to the original bias or imperialistic approach, but is guided more by the external end-objectives that the author wants his or her writing to serve. Finally, the gender of the writer also influences the overall presentation and representation of facts and tone of writing. Both male and female travel writers are found to suffer from double colonialism – a term used to understand that colonialism itself places stereotypes on the other cultures, but within colonialism, the women themselves are treated as the ‘other’ (Mills, 1993). Women writers subdue their accounts while the male writers tend to present an exotic picture of the women in other cultures (Pratt, 2007). It can be concluded that travel writing per se should not be seen as an objective interpretation of the culture of those who are represented. As there is no agreed-upon framework or protocol for travel writing – as there is for academic or technical or business writing – there is a wide scope for passing biased, stereotypical writing as cultural interpretation. There is therefore a need to understand the context in which the writer has written, as well as the writers’ own orientation or past background. The development of such an understanding however is still dependent on the readers’ own discretion or ability to discern. References Casson. L. (1994). Travel in the ancient world. Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Cliffard, J. and Marcus, G. E. (1986).Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (A School of American Research advanced seminar). CA: University of California Press Grewal, I., Fish, S. and Jameson, F. (1996). Home and Harem, Nation, Gender, Empire, and the Cultures of Travel London: Holland, P. and Huggan, G. (2000). Tourists with typewriters: critical reflections on contemporary travel writing. MI: University of Michigan Press Hooper, G. and Youngs, T. (2004). Perspectives on Travel Writing (Studies in European Cultural Transition). Surray, UK: Ashgate Publishing Islam, S. M.(1996). The Ethics of Travel: From Marco Polo to Kafka. Manchester: Manchester UP. Mills, S. (1993). Discourses of Difference: An Analysis of Women’s Travel Writing and Colonialism. New York: Routledge Pratt, M. L. (2007). Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. UK: Routledge Porter, D. (1991). Haunted Journeys: Desire and Transgression in European Travel Writing. NJ: Princeton University Press Santos, C. A. (2006). Cultural politics in contemporary travel writing. Annals of Tourism Research, 33(3), 624-644 Scott, D. (2004). Semiologies of Travel from Gautier to Baudrillard: Travel Writing in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century France Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Siegel, K. (2002). Issues in Travel Writing: Empire, Spectacle and Displacement. OX, UK: Peter Lang Publishing Siegel, K. (2004). Gender, Genre, and Identity in Women’s Travel Writing. OX, UK: Peter Lang Publishing Spurr, D., Fish, S. and Jameson, F. (1993). The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing, and Imperial Administration (Post-Contemporary Interventions). NC: Duke University Press Books Speake, J. (2003). Literature of Travel and Exploration: An Encyclopedia. New York: Fitzroy Dearborn. Read More