dark tourism: understanding the nature of such attractions

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

Thank you

• Your comments and questions are most welcome

• jjle@gcu.ac.uk

• www.moffatcentre.com