AustLit
Issue Details:
First known date:
2009...
vol.
13
no.
1
2009
of
Studies in Travel Writing
est. 1997-2002
Studies in Travel Writing
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.
Latest Issues
Notes
-
Contents indexed selectively.
Contents
* Contents derived from the 2009 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
-
'New Age Trippers': Aboriginality and Australian New Age Travel Books,
single work
criticism
(p. 27-43)In the last two decades of the twentieth century Australia became an attractive travel destination for alienated middle-class Westerners in search of a spiritual utopia. In such texts Aboriginality is represented as a source of spiritual transcendence and as a remedy for the evils of modern consumerism and industrialisation. This article examines a number of books by white New Age spiritual travellers-James Cowan's Two Men Dreaming (1995), Marlo Morgan's Mutant Message Down Under (1994), and Harvey Arden's Dreamkeepers (1995) - that claim to (re)discover a lost, universal, sacred heritage within Aboriginal cosmologies. The discourses employed by recent Australian New Age travel texts are prima facie examples of postcolonial forms of cultural appropriation. Yet the involvement of indigenous agents in the production, promotion, and critique of such texts complicates the argument that these texts are simply new forms of cultural colonisation (Author's abstract).
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Last amended 30 May 2011 10:57:49
