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Travel and celebrity culture: an introduction
Citation
Clarke, RGH, Travel and celebrity culture: an introduction, Postcolonial Studies, 12, (2) pp. 145-152. ISSN 1368-8790 (2009) [Refereed Article]
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Copyright Statement
Copyright 2009 The Institute of Postcolonial Studies
DOI: doi:10.1080/13688790902887148
Abstract
In the West, travel has long afforded opportunities for fame beyond the
strictures of class, gender and caste, and travel writing has served as one of the
principal media through which celebrity associated with travel has been
produced, circulated and consumed. Likewise, celebrity, generally conceived,
has conferred on those whom Francesco Alberoni terms the 'powerless elite',
freedom in many spheres of modern life; and in modernity few formations
have come to represent freedom with quite the force of travel. Yet despite the
relatively recent academic focus on travel and celebrity, particularly with
respect to their relevance to understanding the dynamics and relations of
power in colonial and postcolonial cultures, the relationship between these
fields is relatively unexplored. Modern Western travel culture, like celebrity, it
could be said, has played a dubious role in the development of capitalist
democratic cultures, as a force and symbol of enfranchisement and liberation,
on the one hand, and equally of containment and exploitation, on the other.
Both travel and celebrity are of particular relevance to postcolonial studies
given their ambivalent meanings and functions in the dynamics of appropriation,
domination, resistance and reconciliation that distinguish local, regional
and transnational colonialisms and postcolonizing dynamics. In particular,
both command attention for the 'identity work' they afford various readers
and audiences. In recent scholarship, travel has been figured either as
oppressive and colonizing, or as a force for disruption, hybridity and
liberation. Likewise, celebrity has been represented ambiguously as either
emblematic of the degeneration in public tastes, authority and authenticity, or
as a vector through which alternative and anti-hegemonic politics and
identities may be embodied and emboldened. The inherent duplicity of
celebrity and travel as institutions, discursive systems and forms of symbolic
power in societies experiencing colonial and postcolonial modernity, as well
as their historical entanglements, invites closer examination of these relationships.
This special issue of Postcolonial Studies provides a departure point for
such an examination.
Item Details
Item Type: | Refereed Article |
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Keywords: | travel, celebrity culture, powerless elite, liberation |
Research Division: | Language, Communication and Culture |
Research Group: | Other language, communication and culture |
Research Field: | Other language, communication and culture not elsewhere classified |
Objective Division: | Expanding Knowledge |
Objective Group: | Expanding knowledge |
Objective Field: | Expanding knowledge in language, communication and culture |
UTAS Author: | Clarke, RGH (Dr Robert Clarke) |
ID Code: | 57232 |
Year Published: | 2009 |
Deposited By: | English, Journalism and European Languages |
Deposited On: | 2009-06-30 |
Last Modified: | 2013-03-19 |
Downloads: | 4 View Download Statistics |
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