Issues in travel writing: empire, spectacle, and displacement

Siegel, K. (2002). Issues in travel writing: empire, spectacle, and displacement. New York: Peter Lang.

Kristi Siegal’s compilation of essays characterizes the current attention to travel writing and the ways to best categorize this writing as genre.   Siegal divides her book into three sections: one regarding postcolonial theory, one addressing cultural and spiritual landscapes, and one discussing identity and diaspora.  The collections covers the growing critical interest in autobiography and its relationship to travel writing, as well as comment on multiculturalism, nationalism, colonialism, and post-colonialism.  The essays synthesize work done to examine issue relevant to travel and travel writing, and the authors prescribe the genre as having many cultural and sociological side effects (largely due to the authorial voice, the question of audience, and the treatment of experience).   To further highlight the significance of this realm of study, the essays discuss the works of many of the most critically acclaimed writers of the contemporary age.  Kristi Siegal is Associate Professor and Chair of English (and the Languages, Literature, and Communication Division) at Mount Mary College in Wisconsin. and she continues to focus on the critical and cultural  implications of popular genres of writing, not only in antiquity, but also modernity.

This text provides ample critiques of contemporary travel writing, although it doesn’t venture into the digital realm.  Siegal evenly balances the essays as a working conversation between authors, which provides effective questions for my research into travel blogs.  Some such questions raised by this text are: what are the lingering effects of “empire” on travel blogging? How do travel blogs create a sense of illusion and spectacle within the guise of reality?  How can a travel blogger depict a conscientious humanism without losing the “sell” factor?  Overall, Siegal compiles a necessary cache of criticism for application to the digital replica of the travel genre.