Agoraphobic travel? Mudimbe's Cheminements: Carnets de Berlin (avril–juin 1999)

Assumptions regarding the form and content of travel writing mean this genre is widely understood to be structured according to the progressive stages of a journey and concerned primarily with actual topographies and cultural difference. In V.Y. Mudimbe's Cheminements: Carnets de Berlin (avril–juin, 1999), an unwillingness to conform to any of travel writing's usual conventions appears to exclude the text from any theoretical debate on this particular genre. However, this article argues that Cheminements has an invaluable role to play in critical processes that elaborate upon or interrogate commonplace understandings of travel and travel writing. In particular, Mudimbe's inattention to movement, distance and place suggest a rejection of a more widespread ‘agoraphilic’ standard of travel in favour of practices that allow for an entirely different encounter with the world.