Looking for a quote about decolonizing travel

February 27, 2016 11:20 AM

I'm looking for a quote that is along the lines of "tourists go to places where other people are wanting to leave/can't leave" except much more nuanced?

It's a very powerful quote that I saw on tumblr a few years ago, but I didn't save it to my chagrin! It was focused on discussing the gaze of tourists and how that is directly tied to mobility and privilege in a way that most locals will not get to experience. It was more detailed than what I wrote above, but that part stuck out the most to me.

I am thinking it is most likely a person of color academic that works in postcolonial and/or decolonizing politics, but I don't have anymore details than that.

posted by yueliang to Society & Culture (2 answers total)

Best answer: You're making me think of Jamaica Kincaids's *A Small Place*. An excerpt of it can be found here (third paragraph in), with this notable quote from her work:

"Every native of every place is a potential tourist, and every tourist is a native of somewhere. Every native everywhere lives a life of overwhelming and crushing banality and boredom and desperation and depression, and every deed, good and bad, is an attempt to forget this. Every native would like to find a way out, every native would like a rest, and every native would like a tour. But some natives — most natives in the world — cannot go anywhere. They are too poor. They are too poor to go anywhere. They are too poor to escape the reality of their lives; and they are too poor to live properly in the place where they live, which is the very place you, the tourist, want to go — so when the natives see you, the tourist, they envy you, they envy your ability to leave your own banality and boredom, they envy your ability to turn their own banality and boredom into a source of pleasure for yourself."
posted by correcaminos at 11:44 AM on February 27, 2016 [41 favorites]

Response by poster: wow. That was like, twenty minutes? AMAZING. Thank you so much, this quote has been haunting me for a long time and now I'm so enthused that I can read Jamaica Kincaid!
posted by yueliang at 12:01 PM on February 27, 2016 [1 favorite]