Unsettling Travel
Travel can be a force that perpetuates systems of discrimination and exploitation. Bani Amor describes how we start dismantling coloniality. BY JACOB ANDERSON-MINSHALL
A friend of mine recently commented that all travel is colonizing. Do you think that’s true? No. I say that because I think it’s important to be specific about what we’re talking about, since “travel” is usually implied to describe leisure tourism abroad. I like to reframe travel to consider all migratory experiences, from people displaced due to the effects of imperialism to those stolen and trafficked into slavery, to just how we all navigate our local communities. When we limit this word to only apply to a small minority of monied, usually white Westerners, we limit the scope of the
conversation and exclude needed visions for actual change in this space. In that regard, when oppressed peoples visit each other and share resistance tactics, analysis, and joy, radical change occurs. Look at Marcus Garvey in Costa Rica or Malcolm X in Egypt or Angela Davis in Palestine and Black Lives Matter activists in Cuba. I also see how Afro-descendant people traveling to Black regions in Latin America or on homegoing journeys to the African continent, for example, like the tours that groups like AfroLatinx Travel organizes, places that the tourism industry warns us not to visit because of perceived danger or seemingly poor infrastructure, can bring about healing and solidarity for those communities and those deep, deep wounds. How do we decolonize the travel industry? You can’t decolonize a capitalistic enterprise like the tourism industry. Decolonization is about the sovereignty of Native communities, brought about by a return of land so that self-determination can be possible. Abolishing systems that keep power imbalances intact (for
Angela Davis, speaking here after she was fired from UCLA because of socialist affiliations, found kinship with other oppressed peoples during her visit to the Middle East
DUKE DOWNEY/GETTY IMAGES
Bani Amor is a genderqueer travel writer, photographer, and activist from Brooklyn by way of Ecuador. They explore the relationships between race, place, and power and teach other authors to “dismantle coloniality,” in travel writing. Because the genre was born during European expansionism, its tropes can inherently offer a colonial point of view. Out Traveler spoke with Amor about their work, whether all travel is colonizing, and what we can do to change things.
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