dark tourism: understanding the nature of such attractions
TRANSCRIPT
Dark Tourism: understanding the nature of such attractions
Professor J John LennonMoffat Centre for Travel and Tourism
Business DevelopmentGlasgow Caledonian University
www.moffatcentre.com
Dark Tourism
• Travel partly or mainly for encounters actual or symbolic…with death and disaster
Dark Tourism
• The attraction of sites of mass killing, assassination, genocide, human loss.
• Significant fascination for many intrigued by dark past and tragic history
• Issues of education, historical function, heritage appeal and memory
• Global appeal and significance
A Global Phenomena
Dark Tourism
• Ancient – Pilgrimage and Crusades, viewing London executions, battles Waterloo 1815
• Modern – tourism as a rational and educative, from Grand Tour to Museums interpreting war / atrocity so that visitors will ‘learn’ from the past / ‘understand’ / warnings about reoccurrence
Dark Tourism
• Post Modern - Role of Global Communications, collapsing space and time –catalyst to interest in sites
• Objects of Dark tourism create anxiety about modernity and ‘rational planning’
• Educative and visitor elements of sites are accompanied by commodification and commercialisation
Interpretation and Omission
• What is interpreted and what is not commemorated
• The Watergate Hotel (USA)
• The Killing Fields of Cambodia
Tuolsleng (S21) and Choeung Ek
Cambodia
Khmer Rouge 1975-79
• Period of Democratic Kampuchea
• Revolutionary social order
• Closure of borders and imports/ exports
• Abandonment of technology, marketplace, family, religion
• Agrarian economy
• 2 m genocide in country of 7.3m
Heritage in Cambodia
• S 21 and loss of records
• Cheoung Ek one of 355 extermination camps of the Khmer Rouge era
• A period that achieve very limited cover in their education provision
• Very limited interpretation / orientation
• Those open operate with limited finances
• Choeung Ek ; Operation now franchised to a Japanese company
Heritage in Cambodia
• What does it mean to visit such sites… view these places …a repetition that offers neither warning or education ?
• Representation and Presentation
• Shared past and our relationship with evil and mortality
1 Killing Field of 355 +1 Security Office of 167+
Prime Minister Hun Sen
As tourism sites
• Visitation and Appeal
• Historical authenticity and detail (built heritage)
• Conservation or decay
• Centrality of memorial and record
• Primo Levi and the importance of retention
Retention or Decay
• Germany – where so many sites are preserved, managed, publicly accessible
• Germany openness about the past can leave the visitor shell shocked and heartened
• Yet the debate about utilisation of scarce resources on conservation of buildings of this period is a serious one
Dark Heritage and Dark Tourism
• What does it mean to visit such sites… view these places …a repetition that offers neither warning or education ?
• Representation and Presentation
• Shared past and our relationship with evil and mortality
Dark Architecture provides
• Intensely visual record remains of various periods; physical evidence
• Awareness heightened in film and media representation
• Ability of artefact and building to transmit a reality
• Intimation of our curious relationship with evil, tragedy and death
The Irish Context
• The Famine
• Independence : Kilmainham Gaol
• Northern Ireland and the Troubles
• The Maze
• The Murals
• Tours of the Troubles
The Irish Context
• It is possible to create interpretation of a site that is sensitive, neutral, historically accurate and educational
• Berlin: Topography of Terrors, House of the Wannsee Conference, Sachsenhausen KZ
• These sites are vital in conserving record, preserving memory and dealing with issues of denial and ‘fake’news.
The Irish Context
• Evidence merits a place
• Education and understanding is critical
• These narratives merit a voice
Dark Tourism in 2017
• Populist Politics, Terrorism, Climate change, Natural disasters
• Dark Tourism a niche interest
• Society : abbreviated news feeds, hyperbolic electoral claims and increasing economic uncertainty
• Is this interface between history, ideology and tourism of relevance ?
Dark Sites
• Primary objects, evidence, conserved, interpreted and marketed
• Part of the tourist gaze ; choreographed, composed and framed for consumption
• Some sites are critically important to documentation and historical record
Dark Tourism Sites
• Present evidence of selective interpretation and heritage commodification
• They illustrate the exclusion of minorities, ethics of ‘selling’ the past
• Increasingly important in a society where truth has become a commodity
• Dark sites will continue to be dominated by moral complexities surrounding commemoration, education and interpretation.
Dark Tourism Sites
• Maintain their relevance by seeking to address ethical dichotomies and dealing with the selectivity in much of the historical narrative
• Contrasts with the immediacy of current communications in social and digital channels.
Dark Tourism Sites
• Can offer primacy of the object and ‘authentic’ experience in contrast to simulated or virtual alternatives
• Most importantly offers us evidence of aspects of our collective and unacceptable shared past
