Travel

This article investigates the implications of substituting the trope of travel for that of globalization. By exploring the possible temporal and spatial assumptions in 'travel', it considers how this might allow for contigency and particularity in lived experience and in forms of knowledge. In contemporary cultural theory, movement (or travel) and multiplicity are valued as principles of meaning, knowledge and the self; but there is a danger that a simple privileging of movement can end up reinventing the very singularity that would be undone. Developing a more subtle approach to movement that retains multiplicity involves putting into question simple oppositional structures and reversals such as stasis/movement. These issues are addressed with reference to the uncanny structure of home and away, the centrality of borders to movement and the significance of ruptures and 'the moment' to 'lived' time.