‘From spaceflights to ‘doom tourism', travel poses questions of philosophy — and power'
Emily Thomas
Emily
Thomas
is Professor of Philosophy at
Durham University
. She tells
Srijana Mitra Das
at TE about the nature of travel:
Emily Thomas is sitting in her living room, its windows giving a glimpse into the afternoon sunshine which, in an English summer, can't decide if, slipping between leafy filigree, it wants to sparkle like a diamond or gleam like green-tinted gold. Yet, as TE spoke with her, the philosopher's discussion was not about homelands but places far away.
Could she describe her work on the philosophy of travel? She replies, 'At the core was a question — has philosophy ever had anything to do with travel? As I began research, I found philosophy and travel have had lots to do with each other. They have interacted in all kinds of ways throughout history.'
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Maps, the knowledge of where to go and why, are key to this interaction. How can we understand them philosophically? Thomas laughs, '
Maps
are the most fascinating objects. They seem deceptively simple, a map of a city or part of a country might look like it's just telling you where the roads, buildings or hills are. But actually,' And here, her voice drops confidentially, 'So much decision-making went into what to represent on a map and how it is shown.
Maps are not simple representations of the world, they are very complex depictions of what the map-maker desires to highlight. Often, the map-maker emphasises a society's power structures, that's why you see palaces, churches or temples on maps, not houses of individual people.'
Is technology, with its ability to scope out every corner of Earth, altering old ways of map-making? 'Yes. Google Maps is probably the most popular online mapping service now. Again, what it does and doesn't flag says a lot about what its map-makers think is important or what they believe we consider important. So, they highlight tourist sites but not the houses of individual people.
Also, unlike paper maps, online maps represent different parts of the world in exactly the same way, you can look up the United States, the United Kingdom or India and an online map will use the same colour schemes to represent all these diverse places. That gives the illusion that all these places are much more similar than they are, they put a kind of film over our perception of the world's complexity.'
Some parts of the world are clearly different from others, though, marked by nature's most spectacular aspects. Has travel had links, both in philosophy and history, with ecology? Thomas nods emphatically. 'Yes. A lot of travel is about humans going into nature and experiencing unfamiliarity, bad weather or difficult terrain. How they navigate this embodies human approaches to nature.
Throughout history, you can see how people's attitudes towards nature changed by reading their travel writing — for example, before the 17th century, many writers described mountains in negative terms like 'boils and warts upon Earth'. Then, in the late 17th century, poets, novelists and painters became enthralled by Isaac Newton's philosophy of space, where
Newton
expounded on space being connected to God. Suddenly, there grew this new conception of space as divine — travel writers began seeing mountains differently and started describing them as 'cathedrals to God'.'
This also changed how many humans felt they could impact nature. As Thomas explains, 'In Western philosophy, people often saw nature as something they could do what they liked with, thinking God had created it for humans, around the 18th century, those attitudes began to change, partly due to the American transcendentalists. People like
Ralph Waldo
Emerson and
Henry Theroux
began conceiving of nature as divine in itself, perhaps even the embodiment of God, and not just something God made. So, many began thinking, 'Well, nature isn't something that's just useful — we must protect it as it's inherently beautiful.'
That began what is today's ecology movement, where people see themselves as caretakers of nature, rather than its rulers.' What exactly is the rather disturbingly termed 'doom tourism', linked to nature, though? Thomas replies, 'It's the idea that many beautiful places on our planet, like the Arctic, Antarctic or coral reefs, are 'doomed', largely due to climate change.
The thought is, 'Well, as they're perishing, we should rush to see them as quickly as we can.' The problem is people going to these places, taking planes and leaving large carbon footprints, contribute to environmental problems. This produces an ethical dilemma — is it alright to visit these 'doomed' places when the very act of going there will hasten their demise? Some philosophers think we should protect these places rather than hurry their end along.'
Meanwhile, why is the interest in 'space tourism' rising — are people just bored of planet Earth? Thomas says, 'That could be one part — but what space tourism offers above many other forms of travel is exclusivity. Several people can claim to have visited the Arctic or Antarctica now — very few can say they've been to space.' Thomas pauses, thinks and then continues, 'I think another part is that we now have so much fiction, movies, documentaries and novels about what it's like to go into space.
That's powered a very real human curiosity about this. Some people have also recounted how going into space can be transformative — when you're an astronaut looking down on Earth, it gives a very new perspective. It helps us realise how our planet is deeply beautiful, unique and actually unified and it should be protected. I personally would be quite curious about obtaining a perspective that seems very hard to get in any other way except literally leaving the planet and looking back on it.'
The view of the traveller is thus central, but has the idea of modern travel been shaped largely by a white male gaze? Thomas smiles ironically and says, 'Oh, yes, certainly within the West. If you look at who wrote the most historical travel books, it's almost always white men. In Europe and
North America
, very few women wrote about travel and even fewer people of colour did so.
That's not true of other places — China and Japan have an enormous history of travel writing, also by men but not white men. That viewpoint is important to remember. Travel is about unfamiliarity and otherness. But what is unfamiliar to one may not be so to another. That defines travel — and a lot of what happens at home.'
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