This contribution aims to explore 4 aspects
of the interactions between tourism and places of
memory, which will be discussed on the basis of the
literature:
1/ Tourism and painful memories:
Tourism associated with painful memories
has been a largely globalized phenomenon,
which nevertheless reflects contrasted
memory dynamics.
2/ Tourism, places of memory and politics:
The tourist attractiveness of places of
memory is part of complex processes where
“memory work” (travail de mémoire) and
tourism development interact, in response
to numerous challenges, revealing the
political dimension of tourism;
1/ Tourism and painful
memories: Tourism associated
with painful memories has
been a largely globalized
phenomenon, which
nevertheless reflects contrasted
memory dynamics.
Bosnia and Herzegovina, South Africa, Cambodia,
Vietnam, Ireland, Armenia, Guatemala: for several
decades, remembrance tourism has been globalized.
The most visited sites have long been European or
American sites (some historians locate the origins of
“battlefield” tourism in Gettysburg during the Civil
War) but today the phenomenon is global. Adopting
a functionalist logic, some researchers explain it by
3/ Places of memory and tourists’
contributions: Tourists inscribe their
practices in the geography of places of
memory officially produced and marketed.
This is a process that questions tourists’
motivations and experiences. Tourists
also actively contribute to the production
of constantly recomposed spaces of
memory, through practices that can lead
to a redefinition of the notion of a place of
memory.
the widespread presence of violence in the world:
«few geographical areas escape memories marked
by violence variously linked to dictatorships, mass
crimes, totalitarianisms or genocides» (Chevalier,
Lefort, 2016). However, this approach conceals
the very contrasting dynamics that characterize
the geography of remembrance tourism according
to the contexts, the complexities of perceptions
and practices that can be associated with it, the
possible dynamics of transformation, forgetting and
rememoration. The global scale of the phenomenon
may refer to the analysis of the historian Henry
4/ The social function of “rememebrance
tourism” in question: The rise of tourism
and its massification in some places has
given rise to many debates and discussions
in the academic world and beyond, about
the social functions of “remembrance
tourism” and its efficiency in transmitting
memory.
Rousso: «All over the world, despite different
political or cultural contexts, despite the extreme
diversity of historical legacies, the way societies deal
with the past has not only undergone significant
structural changes in the last third decades of
the 20th century, but it has tended to unify, to
“globalize”, to encourage forms of collective
representations and public action that, at least in
appearance, are increasingly similar» (Rousso,
2007). Other researchers emphasize “dynamics of
memory”, in the constant making, dependant on
movement and circulation, suggesting to rethink
social memory as a manifestation and result of
globalization and global media culture. Astrid Erll
8
Observing Memories
ISSUE 3