Abstract
In this article I investigate the ‘adiaphorization’ of ethical discomfort in travel stories in the Dutch magazine Avenue (1965-2002) – a politically oriented, high-quality glossy that attracted a wealthy, anti-bourgeois, audience. Which became increasingly clear during this period, and also led to an international code of conduct for ethical tourism in the 1990s, is the fact that the desire to travel is at odds with its harmful effects. Traveling began to raise ethical dilemmas, for instance regarding encounters with ‘the Other’. How have Dutch travel authors, and popular magazines, in a period of ever-increasing mass tourism, dealt with this issue? In a heterogenous selection of four early Avenue travelogues (1967-1972), I will analyse the discursive strategies of romanticising travel and the role of a cosmopolitan discourse informed by insights from both postcolonial theory and travel writing studies. Furthermore, I will study the material qualities of the magazine (its photography and advertisements) and reflect on the effects of the fact that travel stories are mainly preserved in book form, stripped of their original glossy context and, possibly, of their ethical ambiguity.
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