Colonial and orientalist tropes in travel-writing

This study examines the relation between travel writing and postcolonialism. In order to dothis it first looks at the history of travel literature, by doing a close reading of selectedpassages from travel literature, and link the history to contemporary practices. The closereading will focus on whether one can hear local voices in the accounts of the travel writers,taking Gayatri Spivak’s question ‘Can the Subaltern Speak’ as its focus. A related question iswhether the subaltern can travel. Spivak reminds us to focus on the production of knowledge,archive, dissemination of knowledge and access to sources concerning knowledge of a space.The relationship between the privileged traveller and disprivileged/dispossesed native iscrucial and in that sense, this relationship is not necessarily between a European and thenative- people living in the same country may equally exoticize one another. The experienceof travel and writing of travel is shaped by race, class and gender at all periods of time