CONCEPTUAL DISCUSSION OF DARK TOURISM:
suffering, egoism and the depersonalization of death.
Maximiliano E Korstanje
Universidad de Palermo, Argentina
How to cite this paper.
Korstanje M (2014) “Conceptual discussion of dark tourism: suffering, egoism and
the depersonalization of death”. Conference, GOA University India. 02 to 03 May
2014. “Globalization of tourism, opportunities and challeneges”.
Introduction
Long time ago, Claude Levi-Strauss (1968) problemized on the epistemology of
anthropology and social sciences, which confused the dissociation between observable
world and structure. For his view, ethnologists were accustomed to see, hear and write
what their senses captivate from visited fieldwork, but this was not enough to configure
a scientific spectrum of social issues. Structuralism has taught us to find the function of
institutions (beyond the eyes of history). His concerns were aimed at deciphering the
inconsistencies of phenomenology and ethno-methodology, which have serious
problems to explain the dissociation between what people do and say. We often follow
some habit though we are not conscious of why we make the things. In the same
dichotomy remains still the investigation in dark tourism to date.
Valuable research has advanced over years on the elements that form dark tourism as a
social expression as well as the interests of tourists to visit these sites (Foley & Lennon,
1996; Seaton, 1996; Miles, 2002; Strange & Kempa, 2003; Wight, 2006; Jamal & Lelo,
2008; Robb, 2009; Stone & Sharpley, 2008; Sharpley, 2005; Stone, 2012; Kang et al,
2012), but they put too much attention to the perception of tourists instead of valorizing
other methodologies. Similarly to opinion polls which constitute an instrument to know
consumer’s assets and preferences, these studies emphasized on the problem of tourist´s
cravings as a factor of engagement with the fictionalized sites. In view of that,
authenticity plays a crucial to boost attractiveness of destinations. Underpinned in the
proposition that tourists are valid sources of empirical information, researchers criticize
any attempt to construct conceptual model, as a speculative or philosophical approach
(Korstanje, 2011b). As a result, the bibliography which explores dark tourism issues is
based on mere descriptions that fail to articulate an all-encompassing theory. What are
the limits of perception?.
On another hand, the use of TICS to emulate virtual landscapes has added polemic to
the debate to what an extent dark tourism is ethical or not, as well as a clear explanation
of our strange fascination for death. This text intends to explore the anthropological
roots of dark tourism to find an all-embracing model that improve the current
understanding of the issue. Our thesis, rather than current conceptual studies published
at the most prestigious tourism-led journals, is that dark tourism represents a
postmodern attempt to reverse the social function of death, weakening the social bond
by the introduction of a sentiment of superiority. At this stage, technology and virtuality
accelerate the dependency of self to other´s suffering creating a vicious circle that
empirical research has not revealed. Philosophically speaking, it is safe to say from its
birth, the man is dying. This means the man comes to this world from and to death. By
reminding this seems to be a tactic to deter the process of corruption.
Understanding Death
Thanatology has shed the light on human interpretation and the degree of acceptance to
death. Religion and religiosity are mechanisms that pose human beings before their
death. It is hypothesized that secular societies struggle to expand the life by the neglect
of afterlife (Bardis, 1981; 1986). Over years, sociologists have showed how pour
people, who are subject to more material deprivation than rich ones, experience further
hopes in death (Korstanje, 2006). As the previous backdrop, Bardis (1986) collated
enough evidence to confirm that blacks developed a further acceptance to death than
whites. Besides, residents in mega-cities are less incline to think in their deaths than
inhabitants of rural areas. At some extent, religiosity and economy are inextricably
intertwined. The German philosopher F. Feuerbach acknowledged not only the
reflexibility of religion but also questioned to what an extent human beings project their
deprivation towards the archetype of gods. After all, “religion is an act of reflection, a
self reflection about the essence of humanity: god is for man the sublimation of their
sensations and ideas as the reminder in the lived ones” (Feuerbach, IV). His
conclusions are based on the historical anthropomorphizing of death. By counterbalancing their own deprivations, societies construct an archetype of divine world
which is at odds of real life. Pour societies are prone to believe in omnipotence Gods,
who offer in afterlife a plenty of exquisite delicacies and imaginable comforts.
In this vein, Johann Huizinga (1993) reported that Middle Ages laid much stress on the
archetype of death. It not only represented the decay of life, but also woke up a
primitive fear. If the daily life was determined by cruelty, conspirators and corruptions,
the community constructed some ideal types in order for social bondage to be tied.
Similarly to a psychological mechanism of defense, chivalry, love and honor served to
give hope to peasants who were more oppressed by their lords. In this context, the idea
of death alluded to the imaginary of sacredness. The putrefaction of the body was
common for lay people but not sacred persons, bishops, or saints. The proximity to
these personages was a sign of religious devotion. Pilgrimages were not a spectacle at
these times, but a need to be close to the chosen by God. By the decline of medieval
times, as never before, exhibited a strange trend, this means the description and portrait
of death.
Hans Belting (2007) explains that death and image are historically intertwined.
Whenever the king by natural decay or any motive, was unable to make personal
appearance, many monarchies symbolized his presence by a mask or a subrogate body.
The represented image of the king not only re-constructed the hierarchy of society at
risk of disappearance, but also exhibited the nature of politics. Any image is a ways of
sublimating death. One of the founding fathers of social anthropology, Bronislaw
Malinowski, who explored the performance of rites in Melanesia, acknowledged that
death represented an archaic problem for humankind. Survivors that are suddenly
surprised by the other’s death, face greater degree of uncertainty because nobody knows
who the next one is. To reduce the resulted anxiety, they construct a monument to
remind the event. The mourning process is opened when come into being two
sentiments, fear and pain, and closed at time these two emotions are balanced
(Malinowski, 1948).
In respect to this, Phillipe Aries (1975) contended that the secularization has expanded
the boundaries of the life expectative but paradoxically uncovered the wilderness of
death. In middle times, death was elsewhere and for that people were accustomed to die.
Its nature was disciplined by religion, arts, science and many other institutions. Now,
the problem lies the mortality rate was diminished but death terrifies the society. As
Derek S. Jeffreys put it, this happens because we experience two types of different
times. One and the most accepted, is the time of our life. We are often familiar with our
condition facing diverse shifts which do not alter our identity. The passing of days
expresses a time which is chronologically explainable. But a second typology of time
threatens our existence. To explain this better suppose that one’s relative dies, this
dramatic event exhibits the vulnerability of my own existence. We, human beings, make
institutions to give a valid response to the problems of life, but the enemy, Jeffreys
adds, is our staunch enemy (Jeffreys, 2013).
The dismantle of communism has serious effects for local economies so that capitalism
has been adopted by the whole countries. Based on a limited control over business by
states, investors have selected peripheral countries with lower costs to enhance their
profits. Undoubtedly, this resulted in a combination of cost-benefits searches that led
workers to limited job security system. The globalization encouraged a climate of
extreme competition for workers. Being out of this competition means death
(Gottdiener, 1994).
In light of the discussion, Zygmunt Bauman clarified the problem of death in his books
Consuming life and Liquid Fear. The capitalist ethos has changed the mind of citizens,
who passed being part of the production machinery. As commodities, workers are
exploited to congeal the mass-consumption encouraged by capitalism. The big brother
is an example how people enter in competence, as commodities, to be selected and
bought by others. Participants in this reality show know that only one will win, and the
rest will die. Big Brother, for Bauman, emulates the life in capitalist societies which
enhance the style of life of few by producing pauperization for the whole. The modern
state set the pace to the advent of liberal market to monopolize the sense of security for
people. This does not mean that states are unable to keep the security, but also the
market is re-channelling the consumption by the imposition of fear. If human disasters
as Katrina show the pervasive nature of capitalism which abandoned thousand of pour
citizens to death, no less truth is that the “show of disaster” unbinds of responsibilities
for the event. The sense of catastrophe, like death, serves to cover the inhuman nature of
capitalism (Bauman, 2007; 2008). This society only has an answer to crisis, when its
economic system is at risk. Since the real reason for disaster are ignored by the allegory
of death, which persisted in the media and famous TV series where technicians and
forensic experts look to solve the crime, the disaster comes sooner or later (Bauman,
2011). What we really know on the real causes of Auschwitz or 9/11?, may a simple
museum explain us the complexity of human nature?. Bauman will say, absolutely not.
Any attempt to sacralise the dying as a spectacle, at the bottom, represents the prelude
of its neglect.
Last but not least, Korstanje (2013a) understands that the “process of museification” has
direct connection to war-fare and violence. At a first look, wars not only are important
for societies, but also appeal to a vital ethno-genesis as mechanism of social relation.
The fictionalization of pain and death, as well as the necessary weapons employed in
the battles are part of museums. At these shrines, which today have replaced to old
religious temples, the society stores a lot of objects, instruments, even weapons aimed
to enhance the national pride. Museums represent a profound signification (emulation)
of wars and suffering. Revolts, riots and radical revolutions end at a museum. One of
the aspects that have facilitated the expansion of capitalism rested on the efficacy to
recycle the human symbols. Not surprisingly, museums are built as a reminder of war,
which comes from a fabricated story to be socialized to others. The experiences these
spaces generate are politically constructed to deter violence and conflict. Museums
allude to the construction of a mythical history to reinforce the founding values of
society. Nobody would feel anymore the suffering an inmate of Auschwitz. If genocide
museums exist, they are aimed at emplacing the values of democracy and tolerance.
Auschwitz did not say much on the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as the
violation of human rights perpetrated by American government in its history. As Nicole
Guidotti Hernandez (2011) put it, there is not good or bad histories, human beings did
the same along with the passing of years. Each civilization reminds the wilderness of
others, but do not pay attention to its own forms of extreme violence. To the classical
forms of violence exerted by states, there is another subtle unspeakable one which
consists in covering the real statement of fact. In America, the power of states to
discipline the bodies of aborigines depended not only on their strength but their capacity
to create a story, which politically manipulated, helped to their citizens to embrace the
founding values of a silenced genocide.
The epicentre of Dark Tourism
Dark tourism has woken up a hot debate in recent years. While some experts have
focused attention to the phenomenon as a sign of cultural entertainment based on a
repressed sadism (Bloom, 2000; Baudrillard, 1996; 2006; Koch, 2005), others
emphasized in the mediated nature of tourism so that visitors may understand their own
death (Lennon & Folley, 2000; Miles, 2002; Stone & Sharpley, 2008). Dark-tourism
sites denote territories where mass-death or suffering have determined the identity of a
community but no less true is that under some conditions these sites are commoditized
to sell the other´s death as a product (Poria, 2007; Chauhan & Khanna, 2009). In this
token, Stone & Sharpley (2008) warn on the needs of defining dark tourism form other
similar issues. The curiosity or fascination of death seems to be one of the aspects that
define thana-tourism, or dark tourism. But it is important not to lose the sight how these
experiences are framed under shared values that tightens the social bondage (Stone &
Sharpley, 2008). Dark tourism may be defined as a pilgrimage or a experience but what
seems to be important to remind is that it can be an attempt to contemplate death of the
self, by sightseeing the other dead (Stone, 2012).
Applied-research in these types of issues is merely descriptive than explanatory. Biran,
Poria & Oren (2011) claimed that the specialized literature has some problems to
explain the roots of thanaptosis, simply because these studies are not based in empirical
evidence. Like heritage-seekers, dark-site visitors like to expand their current
understanding of history. The epistemological limitations of research are given by the
ignorance of site-interpretation experienced by tourists or visitors. To study the
motivation of dark-seekers one might ask to reconstruct the subject experience. At a
closer look, dark tourism not only entails fascination for death as a primary reason of
attraction but a quest for authentic experiences. The experiential approach catches the
evolution of experience at diverse stages, as well as the combination with the symbolic
resource of subject interpretation. E. H. Cohen (2011) has explained that dark tourism
serves as an educational instrument which gives a message to society. The meaning
conferred to territory plays a vital role at this stage. Visitors tend to think as authentic
those sites where the memorized event took room. Instead, whether museums or shrines
are built on allegorical reasons in sites that nothing has to do with the founding trauma,
they are pondered as inauthentic. Cohen’s outcomes not only reveal the political root of
dark tourism, but also the importance of location whenever the self encounters with
tragedy.
Phillip Stone argues convincingly that the phenomenon takes a wider spectrum which
ranges from darkest to lightest expressions of death. While the former is characterized
by devotion to site of extreme suffering as genocide, mass-murders, or disasters, the
latter one refers to spaces of cultural entertainment and enjoyment as the museums of
Dracula. The differences between both types of tourism are detailed as follows.
Darkest type
Lightest type.
Orientation Education
Entertainment orientation
History Centric
Heritage Centric
Perceived authentic
Perceived inauthentic
Location authenticity
non location authenticity
Shorter time scale to the event
longer time scale to the event
Lower tourism infrastructure
infrastructure.
Higher tourism
Source, Stone 2006. A Dark Tourism Spectrum: towards a typology of death and macabre related tourist sites,
attraction and exhibitions”. Tourism Vol 54 (2): 145-160
Stone adds that some sites offer darker products than others depending on the degree of
suffering. Each subtype can be framed into a spectrum of dark suppliers. To cut the long
story short, this essay review suggest that dark fun factories present a fictionalized death
perceived as less authentic than Auschwitz museum. At time tourism is embraced as a
main industry, the experiences for visitors become more naïve. In respective to this,
Raine devoted considerable time to validate Stone´s hypothesis to empirical fieldwork.
She contends that the fascination for death may be operationalized in variables which
range from lightest to darkest spectrum. Visitors take diverse attitudes to dark tourism
sites (Raine, 2013)
It is often assumed that dark tourism sites exhibits spaces of great pain. To what an
extent these spaces are conducive to a spectacle of horror, as some sociologists put it, is
one of the themes that remain unresolved. Detractors of dark tourism have criticized the
fact that suffering should not be commercialized. Recent investigation has posed the
question on the economic nature of dark tourism. At the late modernity, the
postindustrial societies, far from correcting the problems that led to disaster, recycle the
obliterated space to introduce new business and building infrastructure. Affected
families not only are not economically assisted, but also are pressed to live to the
peripheries of the city. Death and mass-suffering seem to be employed to reinforce the
pillars of capitalism. At this stage, tourism is conducive to logic of exploitation where
death is the primary resource of attractiveness. Particularly, this makes tourism a more
than resilient industry (Korstanje & Clayton, 2012; Klein, 2007; Korstanje, 2011a;
Tarlow & Korstanje, 2013b; Verma & Jain, 2013). In an early study, M. Korstanje & S.
Ivanov (2012) delineate a strong connection between dark tourism with psychological
resilience developed by a community to overcome adversities. Any disaster or trauma
not only gives a lesson to survivors and their community, but also re-structures the
politics of community. The function of dark tourism consists in situating death within
the human understanding of past, present and future. Death generates substantial
changes in the life of survivors. The community, which faced disasters or extreme pain,
runs serious risk of disintegration, unless a much profound sentiment of pride is
developed. To be united, the society alludes to find reasons that explain the disaster.
Dark tourism is conducive to that end.
In this token, L. White and E. Frew (2013) compile a book formed by 19 good
investigations which are very difficult to discuss in a limited manuscript like this, but all
them are aimed at the following axiom. Dark tourism sites are politically designed to
express a message to community. Victims and their families not only have diverse ways
of negotiating that message but also by appropriating an interpretation of social trauma.
Dark tourism alludes to a psychological need of figuring one death by imagining the
other´s death. Nonetheless, the myopia of scholars to understand dark tourism rests on
two primary aspects. There are no clear boundaries or indicators to mark a unified site
of memory which cannot be subject to political struggle. Secondly, starting from the
premise heritage depends on the political interests, sometimes the national discourse
around dark sites are not accepted one side of community.
In perspective, Sather Wagstaff (2011) presents an original thesis based on her autoethnography in the ground-zero of New York. Dark tourism sites wake up sentiment of
loss and mourning. The problem rests in the way we define that loss. What is dark
tourism? And how it can be defined?. The self mediates between its memory and future
by the introduction of reminder. Dark tourism shrine is a form of reminding a paining
event. The appearance of death is not only irreversible, but also inevitable. Visitors are
needed to feel what other felt, though those emotions are unauthentic. From Hiroshima
to World Trade Centre, she acknowledges that disasters should tell a story that helps
control the trauma or sense of loss. The solidarity conferred to US by the terrorist attack
to New York was a clear example of how people are united in context of uncertainty.
Death has the function to strengthen the social bond. Some peripheral nations which are
unfamiliar with the American way conferred their trust to U.S because 9/11 fabricated
shared experiences to other states which can experience a similar situation in the future.
To what an extent, the discourse never reveals the cause of events, nor its social
conjuncture. It is not surprisingly that tourists visit sites without knowing the real
history; they are in part alienated by the heritage. By introducing the human suffering,
dark tourism breaks the influence of ideology. Rather dark tourism, heritage imposes a
one-sided argument created externally to dissuade consumers to adopt governmental
policies otherwise would be rejected. Heritage often follows to politics roots. The pain
is the only way of understanding the other. It enables our natural capacity toward
empathy. Death wakes up the society from its slumber creating the conditions to adopt
substantial changes. Emotions not only do not accept national boundaries but questions
the ethnocentrism given by heritage.
As Sather Wagstaff put it, “Sites of historical and cultural importance that represent
violent events are particularly prone to a social misunderstanding about their
emergence; it is believed that they have come into existence only through the events that
take place at particular location: war results in battlefields, genocides produce mass
graves, the assassination site of a political leader delineates a national sacred place.
However, historical commemorative places are not made as important sites simply
because of the events that may physically mark them as distinct places through
bloodshed or the destruction of building or landscapes. These places are made through
ongoing human practices in time and I argue, across multiple spaces and places” (p.
47). Ground-zero exhibits two important aspects which merit to be discussed. Its
symbolic hole is filled by the conflicts of involving actors, which range from politicians,
families, neighbors and investors. All them struggle to impose their own discourse
about 9/11. Sooner or later, stronger stakeholders will monopolize the interpretation of
the event in view of their own interests. In this context, Sather Wagstaff adds, tourists
are proactive agents to produce meaning beyond the monopoly of political control.
Epistemologically speaking, research in dark tourism has some problems to dissociate
interpretation from perception. Besides, studies allude to the voice of tourists as the only
agent capable to understand what is happening with the approached issue. Social
anthropology has yet acknowledged the problem of positivism to think the truth as an
objective reality which can be reached by asking to people alone. If we do not validate
our hypotheses with rich information, they run the risk to be false (Korstanje, 2014a;
2014b). The problem lies by paying exaggerated attention to what tourists say, we can
be led to wrong conclusions. On one hand, sometimes consulted persons lie, or other
they want to exaggerate their emotions. Furthermore, there is a clear dissociation
between what people do and say. It is clear how under some circumstance, interviewees
do not know the reasons of their feelings or are unable to explain their own behavior
(Korstanje, 2011b; Korstanje, 2014a; 2014b).
I remember in one of my fieldwork in the Cromañón sanctuary, a teenager came to me
one day to explain me further on the problem I was investigating. I accepted his
invitation assuming he had much to say. The interview lasted roughly 5 hours and was
tape-recorded. The information I obtained from this young was very important for me at
a preliminary stage. Nonetheless, with the passing of months I have advanced my
ethnography comparing the collated information by what I can hear and see. Not only I
realized that the original interview was completely false, because the involved keyinformant wanted to attract attention and exaggerated his stories, but he felt the needs to
tell something to me. The importance of this story was not determined by its credibility.
He had not lost anyone in the disaster of Cromañon, though developed a strange
attachment for the event, for the other´s suffering. This empathy led him to alter his
sense of reality. Paradoxically, although this interview was a fake, it underpinned the
main hypotheses in my research opening the doors to new cosmologies and
opportunities to be empirically validated. This story though false shed light on my
investigation.
In tourism fields, like many other managerial disciplines as marketing or management,
persons are importance sources of information, simply because they are consumers. Nor
business-related research neither managerial literature is interested in searching the
truth, but also to incorporate valid and efficient plans of sales enhancement. It is
unfortunate that tourism has a strong legacy of these pseudo-scientific disciplines where
the speeches of consulted respondents have vital value for developing plans of
commercialization. Further interested in improving the profit and business of dark sites,
than understanding the roots of death, much research has fallen into overt
simplifications of what consumers feel or simply perceive. But things can come worse
to worst, in recent decades the cyberspace and technology has emptied out the
anthropological spaces of negotiations. Today, the relationships are bolstered through a
cyber-reality. Death is being experienced by many ways, which escape from the
traditional visit to real spaces. Many cybernauts visit virtual pages specially designed
and programmed by families to experience the suffering of others, like a dark-site. By a
simple click, persons can access to web-pages related to dark “virtual” spaces. This
leads to re-think the problem of dark tourism in view of a new context.
Virtual Dark Tourism
It is safe to say that the life in the world of our grand-fathers was pretty different to
present times. Travels were planned and made not only involving a real displacement
but also in weeks. The high-degree of mobility introduced by the last tech-revolution
shortened the distances and times (Urry, 2007; Sheller & Urry, 2004; Korstanje &
Tarlow, 2012; Vannini, 2012; Tzanelli, 2014a; 2014b). The same technology paved the
ways for the advance of a new virtual world, where even travels are made through
cyberspace. Although, few academic studies have focused on this issue, virtual-touring
represents a common practice in post industrial societies. In specific terms, virtual tour
seems to be a “simulation” generated by special software, where the user meets with
fictitious landscapes or pictures taken by other visitors of real landscapes. The
experience of this, though it is manipulated by the multimedia, is authentic by many
persons. Is this new phenomenon a sign of our irreversible alienation or a new way of
escapement without moving?.
As this backdrop, Kaelber contends that trauma-scape if hard to access physically can
be encouraged through virtual world. These forms of access can be of three types,
tourism on-line, online-tourism and virtual tourism. Whereas tourism on-line limits to
provide complementary information that couples to a real travel such as brochures,
online tourism is characterized by the emotions surfaced after a virtualized snapshot
which is based on a real site. Galleries often portray a set of pictures enrooted in certain
territory. Lastly, virtual tourism is fully constructed and reconstructed in cyberspace.
The last one subtype is unique in many forms (Kaelber, 2007).
The confusion as to what dark tourism may be or not authentic rests on shaky
foundations. Death is symbolically appropriated by the self from different ways. Dark
tourism exhibits a pathway to interpreting death among many others else. The
fascination of understanding death is enrooted in the core of industrial society. To set an
example, TV programs, journalists, and TV series dedicated to cover murders work, like
dark tourism, as disciplinary mechanism to control the other death. It is unfortunate that
the concept of “thanaptosis” was misunderstood by some tourism scholars as Seaton or
Sharpley. To put this in straights, the term was originally coined by the American poet
William Cullen Bryant (1817) to denote the needs of anticipating the own death through
the eyes of others. Those who have read this poem will agree that other deaths make us
feel better because we avoided temporarily our end. At time we want to retain life, we
are suffering because death is inevitable. To overcome this existential obstacle, we have
to listen to “nature”. Our death is a vital process in the transformation of life cycle in the
earth. To be more precise, Bryant alludes to “thanaptosis” as the happiness for life,
which only is possible at time of accepting own-death. This does not mean or explain
the current fascination for other’s death since “Thanaptosis” represents a pantheist
concept of evolution. This is the opposite how Sharpley, Lennon and Seaton and British
school understand what thanaptosis is. This poses two questions, how we may explain
our current fascination for death?, and to what an extent virtual dark tourism is ethical?.
Capitalism and Fascination for death
George H Mead, one of the fathers of symbolic interactionism, questioned why
paradoxically many people are prone to read or listen of bad news presented by
journalism, at the time they show preference by these types of news. What is our
fascination for other’s suffering?. He assertively concludes that the self is configured by
its interaction with others. This social dialectic alludes to anticipation and interpretation
as two pillars of communication-process. The self feels happiness by other’s suffering,
because it represents a rite necessary to avoid or think in own pain. Starting from the
premise the self is morally obliged to assist the other to reinforce its sentiment of
superiority, Mead adds, this is the ethical nature of social relationship (Mead, 2009).
The same remarks may apply for dark tourism shrines. To understand this we have to
come into the myths of Noah and salvation of the world in Christianity, oddly the
exploration of tragedy for our cosmology. This legend tells us that God annoyed by the
corruption of human beings, mandated to Noah to construct an ark. His divine mission
consisted in gathering a pair by specie to achieve the preservation of natural life. The
world was destroyed by a great flood.
At a first glance, as the myth was ethically formulated, a formal message is based on the
importance of nature and the problem of sin, corruption. But unconsciously, it poses the
dilemma of competition. At any tournament or game, there can be only one winner. Not
only the creation but also Noah is witness of other’s death, other’s mass-death. The
curiosity and fascination for death comes from this founding myth. It can be observed in
plays, where only one will be the winner. Even, the big brother who was widely studied
by sociologists and detractors of visual technology rests on this principle. Only few are
the selected ones to live forever. The doctrine of salvation, which is based Protestantism
and Catholicism, claims for (though in diverse ways) understanding death. In dark
tourism experience as Stone put it, we find similar condition of exploitation. The other
interpreted death reminds us that we, the survivors, are in the race and the main thing is
to finish. ¿what is the difference between a dark tourism site, and the medieval pilgrims
to touch Saint’s tombs?.
In medieval times, as earlier discussed, death was present in almost all institutions,
representation of the daily life but paradoxically, pilgrims may not be equaled to dark
tourism sites by many reasons. Unlike modern sight-seers, medieval travellers move to
sacred sites looking two important aspects to redeem their sins, forgiveness or the
mediation of Saints to negotiate with God, a solution to their pains or big troubles.
Although venerated, for medieval travellers death was not a problem like modern
tourists, but also the beginning for a new better life. In this respect, dark tourism
exhibits the opposite dynamic. “Secular tourists” are not interested in the life of others,
nor in their heritage, or biography. They want to avoid their own death.
The
specialized bibliography focuses on those modern tourists understand death through the
lens of others. Rather, our thesis goes in opposite direction. Tourists exorcise death
ritualizing other’s death to expand their own life expectances. Michel Foucault and
Biopolitics have explained brilliantly how this works. Based on the example of Nazism,
Foucault said that Biopolitics is derived from the concept of “bio-power”, which plays a
pervasive role because on one hand it expands the life but by imposing the mass-death.
Nazis improved their technique of bio-technology manipulating the life of others, who
were labeled as “unter-mensh”. Disposed of their rights, some ethnicities and minorities
were subject to a systematic burocratization of death (Foucault, 1969; 2007; Lemke,
2001). The end of WWII resulted in Nazism collapse but its ideology persisted from
many means. The ideals of a “superman” characterized by outstanding powers to deter
the corruption and evilness, persisted as well as the fascination for scientists for genes,
eugenics, clonation and bio-technology. As Jeremy Rifkin put it, “the coming age of
commerce” resulted from the Nazi’s ideology to a selected race may life forever. This
ideology, introduced by British eugenics, has never died in US (Rifkin, 1998). In a
world where people are commoditized as bio-resources to laboratories to grant the life
of elites at the centre, death is expanded to periphery. Most certainly, as Naomi Klein
explained, capitalism has induced to a shock economy where the affected (obliterated)
communities, in case of disasters, are recycled in new forms of consumption. The
doctrine of shock is used by capitalist government for their citizens to accept policies
otherwise would be rejected (Klein, 2007). Of course, this argument is not new, but
illustrates the empirical connection discussed by David Harvey (1989) as “creative
destruction”. Capitalism persists by destroying the social landscapes and institutions to
be reconstructed following other ends. Some philosophical concerns arise in the role
played by technology at this stage.
Shrines reminding spaces of disasters are symbolic dispositif, politically enrooted in the
allegory of uncertainness. In view of that dark tourism serves as a mechanism of
resilience so that the society understands disasters and social trauma (Korstanje &
Ivanov, 2012). As disasters, death comes at any moment of life. This engenders much
anxiety in the survivors. It is important to discuss that survivors post disaster context
develop a much deeper process of mourning. They elaborate special rites (resiliency) to
overcome the traumatic event which inflict pain and suffering. Any victim, before the
climate of destruction, realizes that Gods were benevolent after all. Survivors, that way,
embrace a climate of superiority by their subsistence was given by outstanding
characteristics such as bravery, moral virtue and strength. This type of reaction helps
community to recover to adversity but may generate sentiments of nationalism,
superiority or ethnocentrism if it is not limited. The superiority of survivors, in this vein,
depends on the other’s misfortune. Late capitalism not only exploits these types of
climates, but also obscures the causality of events (Korstanje, 2011a). French
ethnologist, Marc Augé acknowledged that the mass-media portrays tragic events
blurring the connection between causes and consequences. News or stories focus on the
effects instead on a clear diagnosis of reasons behind. As a result of this disasters’ are
continuously repeated once and once again (Augé, 2002). The allegory of death
expressed in dark tourism sites corresponds with a contemporary trend imposed by
Biopolitics. This explains the growth of dark tourism which today escapes the classic
forms of tourism to launch towards the virtual world. In the late capitalism, dark
tourism confers to consumers an aura of superiority, while others who lack of the capital
to enter in the formal circuits of sightseeing, are exploited as other-deads. In this token,
(Virtual) dark tourism is not ethical by many reasons. The most important is the
depersonalization it generates. Whereas, death, observed by ethnologists and
anthropologists, was conducive to strength the social bonds, its representation as it is
placed by dark tourism sites, goes to situate visitors in their own egocentrism.
Conclusion
The present essay review explored not only the anthropological roots of dark tourism
but also the influence of Biopolitics in conforming the allegory of death. In shark
opposition to the medieval traveler, dark tourism consumers seek to reinforce their life
as their other’s death. In contrast to what the specialized literature suggests, dark
tourism reinforces the modern egocentrism to enjoy in brother´s tragedy. Based on the
myth of Noah ark, capitalism introduced the needs of eternal competence to be part of
selected people. Life is symbolized as a great trace where only one will be the winner.
Of course, this means that the rest will loose. If tragedy confers to survivors the aura of
exemplary civilization, it runs higher costs. To what an extent the problem of
authenticity has been introduced in the discussion remains unresolved. As Tzanelli put
it, heritage seems to be one of the pillars of capitalism. Mediated events and games
connote to dual structures. At time local identity is expressed in view of global values,
cities are cloned so that consumers have the same experience from Japan to Buenos
Aires (Tzanelli, 2013; Korstanje, 2013b). The discussion on staged authenticity not only
is troublesome because anyone understands authenticity from diverse perspectives, but
also failed to explain why localism has been overridden by globalization. What would
more than interesting to debate is the prone of modern consumers to enjoy for other’s
suffering. It is unfortunate dark tourism is part of this trend. Whether death generates
social cohesion among human beings, dark tourism enrooted in the modern logic of
exploitation of capitalism creates the opposite. Visitor of dark tourism site are simply
happier because they wish to continue in a utopian race to no where. Nonetheless, this
seems to be a much deeper issue which merits to be investigated in future approaches.
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