Francis Haran

Abstract

We receive descriptions of meetings between cultures from a wide range of sources; for example, from the aspiring empirical objectivity of Intercultural Communication to the more entertaining portrayals of travel writing. But when travel writers employ the principles of Intercultural Communication in their descriptions, does this bring their travel writing closer to the truth about culture? My paper takes up this question through an examination of subjectivity and objectivity in the descriptions of meetings between cultures in travel writing. The writers I discuss are all native speakers of English and the culture they describe is Modern Greece.

Key words: Objectivity, subjectivity, culture, Intercultural Communication, travel writing, post-colonialism, memory, art, truth, Modern Greece