Recent figures suggest that there will be 1.6 billion arrivals
at world airports by the year 2020. "Extreme Pursuits" looks at the
new conditions of global travel and the unease, even paranoia, that
underlies them---at the opportunities they offer for alternative
identities and their oscillation between remembered and anticipated
states. Graham Huggan offers a provocative account of what is
happening to travel at a time characterized by extremes of social
and political instability in which adrenaline-filled travelers
appear correspondingly determined to take risks. It includes
discussions of the links between tourism and terrorism, of
contemporary modes of disaster tourism, and of the writing that
derives from these; but it also confirms the existence of more
responsible forms of travel/writing that demonstrate awareness of a
chronically endangered world.
"Extreme Pursuits" is the first study of its kind to link travel
writing explicitly with structural changes in the global tourist
industry. The book makes clear that travel writing can no longer
take refuge in the classic distinctions (traveler versus tourist,
foreigner versus native) on which it previously depended. Such
distinctions---which were dubious in the first place---no longer
make sense in an increasingly globalized world. Huggan argues
accordingly that the category "travel writing" must include
experimental ethnography and prose fiction; that it should concern
itself with other kinds of travel practices, such as those related
to Holocaust deportation and migrant labor; and that it should
encompass representations of travelers and "traveling cultures"
that appear in popular media, especially TV and film.
Graham Huggan is Professor of Commonwealth and Postcolonial
Literatures at the University of Leeds. He is the coauthor, with
Patrick Holland, of "Tourists with Typewriters: Critical
Reflections on Contemporary Travel Writing" (University of Michigan
Press) and coauthor, with Helen Tiffin, of "Postcolonial
Ecocriticism" (Routledge).
Illustration: "Shadow Wall," 2006 (c) Shaun Tan.
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