 “If you like your history horrible”: The obscene supplementarity of thanatourismSophie James, James Cronin and Anthony Patterson Annals of Tourism Research, 2024, vol. 106, issue C Abstract: By examining witch tourism in Lancashire, England, this paper reveals the ideological role that dark histories fulfil for consumer culture. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, we explore thanatourism as a means for ‘post-historical’ subjects to conceive of wilder, pre-liberal worlds before capitalist realism extinguished all alternatives. Nevertheless, because of how history remains subsumed and consumed commercially, thanatourism works to support rather than subvert tacit endorsement of the neoliberal-capitalist present. Using Derrida and Žižek's theoretical articulations of ‘supplementarity’, we show how thanatourism and its dark historical content is made to function as an ‘obscene supplement’ to the neoliberal-capitalist present through three processes: managed metempsychosis, governed grotesquerie, and curated kitschification. Authenticity within thanatourism remains illusory, but an illusion that nonetheless perpetuates capitalist realism. Keywords: Capitalist realism; Post-history; Žižek; Derrida; Witch tourism; Thanatourism (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:anture:v:106:y:2024:i:c:s0160738324000264 DOI: 10.1016/j.annals.2024.103749 Access Statistics for this article Annals of Tourism Research is currently edited by John Tribe More articles in Annals of Tourism Research from Elsevier |
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