Author: Michael Di Giovine
E-mail: digiovim@uchicago.edu
Department: Department of Anthropology
Institution: University of Chicago
Title: The Imaginaire Dialectic and the Refashioning of Pietrelcina, Italy
Abstract:
This paper examines the “imaginaire dialectic”—a complex process of imagining and
re-imagining site materiality within a “field of touristic production”—by analyzing
how the small Italian town of Pietrelcina affects and is affected by tourist
imaginaries, both materially and immaterially. The birthplace of the immensely
popular 20th century saint and stigmatic Padre Pio, Pietrelcina was “discovered” by
tourists during Pio’s canonization fervor of the late 1990s, and has now been
completely remade (thanks to an architectural firm) to conform to a pervasive and
continually re-forming imaginaire touristique of a “traditional” 19th century Italian
village that served as a formative environment for the Capuchin monk’s ecstatic
visions and supernatural phenomena. After briefly outlining the “field of touristic
production” at Pietrelcina—an ensemble of global epistemic communities engaged
in a Bourdieuian struggle of negotiation and position-taking who each create,
promote, react to, and produce different images of the saint and the town—the
paper explores the varieties of “fragmentary” and “reproducible” representations
that circulate around the world, raising awareness of the saint and creating
particular expectations in potential religious tourists.
Analyzing the images and narratives offered by locals, guides, and site managers, the
paper reveals how the touristic infrastructures attempt to meet tourists’
imaginaries while dialectically re-creating the town in reaction to such
representations. As these initiatives have elicited tensions between “conservation”
and “restoration”—between preserving original remains and re-creating new
structures to seem original—the paper will also discuss theoretical and indigenous
notions of authenticity.
But if Pietrelcina’s transformation embraced some imaginaries, it also reacted
against others. Arguing that Pio’s official iconography of an aging, white-bearded
monk marginalizes Pietrelcina by depicting the monk after he definitively left
Pietrelcina, locals have responded with alternative re-presentations: biographies
and images focusing on Pio as a youth; the paper concludes by examining the
dialectical meanings and subsequent re-presentations made by visitors after their
encounter with the town and its images. Contending that all members of the field of
touristic production produce and consume tourist imaginaries, this paper ultimately
reveals the productivity of examining the “imaginaire dialectic” when researching
meaning-making mechanisms, as well as material and immaterial transformations,
at tourist sites.
Author Bio:
Michael A. Di Giovine is a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at the University of
Chicago. Working in both Southeast Asia (Cambodia and Việt Nam) and Europe
(Italy), his research focuses on tourism/pilgrimage, heritage discourses, museums,
placemaking, development and revitalization. A former tour operator with over a
decade of experience with the travel sector, his monograph, The Heritage-scape:
UNESCO, World Heritage, and Tourism has been well received. A dual Italian and
United States citizen, Michael is currently researching urban and cultural
revitalization in Italy associated with pilgrimage in the cult of twentieth century
Catholic stigmatic and saint, Padre Pio of Pietrelcina.