Whose Paradise?: Cleo and the Sexual Subject

Abstract

Once upon a time the travel guide was for missionaries, colonial government workers, or the travelling colonial voyeur. Now living happily ever after, it is for those who still seek (and endorse the notion of) the "exotic," the "intrepid traveller" who desires a bit of safe (sex?) Paradise ... whose paradise?

Cleo, the popular women's monthly magazine, regularly features a "Travel Go Guide." One such guide, "Papua New Guinea: Primitive Paradise," attempts to entice the would-be tourist to journey into the exotic (August, 1988). For this intrepid traveller, however, the article is an invitation to explore some of the relationships between europhallocentric discourses, desire, violence and the sexual subject.