Landscapes of Aftermath

Abstract

Whilst this is foremost a book about theatre and theatricality, it rests upon the consideration of a particular kind of tourist practice, which I characterize as ‘audience to absence’. Both theatre and dark tourism are haunted by absence and, each in their own manner, traffic in substitutes that attempt to make such absence present, to make it felt. This chapter explores a series of questions that lay down the terms of enquiry for subsequent chapters: What is dark tourism and what might motivate it? In what sense is it theatrical? How might we understand the various roles that tourists take on in relation to the sites discussed? What kinds of theatrical practices speak to the dialectic of absence and presence that this book seeks to read in ethical terms. As Kellee Caton’s comment above, drawn from her survey article, makes clear, an elaboration of what is at stake in the instances of tourism examined has ethical implications for the broader analysis of spectatorship at hand. Laurie Beth Clark, also quoted above, similarly suggests that tourism is one of the ways in which we attempt to approach and understand otherness. This chapter takes up the questions that dark tourism generates and considers them from an explicitly theatrical perspective. Theatricality, for this purpose, is understood as an animating force that traffics in paradoxes and contradiction: it calls into presence that which is absent, whilst at the same time always revealing the incompleteness of the invocation.

Tourism is an ideal metaphorical context for the messy collision of Self and Other in life […]. It is a practice in which self-gratification, self-exploration, and social engagement all take centre stage, often at the same time; hence we can use it as an exemplary context for thinking through questions about our relationships to ourselves and others and about the responsibilities we may hold on these fronts,

Kellee Caton, ‘Taking the Moral Turn in Tourism Studies’ 1921–2

Rather than a debased or trivial engagement, tourism names a performance of alterity. Tourism is one of the ways we make sense out of parts of the world not previously known to us, and of the experiences in our own world that are ‘inconceivable’.

Laurie Beth Clark, ‘Coming to Terms with Trauma Tourism’

The spectator is an actor.

Emmanuel Levinas, Basic Philosophical Writings 39