Writing the Dark Side of travel

Abstract

In recent years the phenomenon of black tourism, thana tourism or "dark tourism" has taken on a special interest from social science specialists. The present book, entitled Writing the dark side of travel, compiles 9 chapters that have death and its respective configurations as the main protagonist. In principle, there is a strange human fascination with the desire and suffering of others, and it is about this need that the death of others serves as a reminder. Black tourism sites comprise a pilgrimage to spaces or sites that symbolically and historically have been marked by great suffering. This particularly opens up the range of possibilities for framing a meaning which, because of the number and disparity of phenomena it covers, is sufficiently broad to achieve a consensus definition. Dark tourism sites include spaces linked to memorable battles, prisons, museums where corpses or elements of torture are exhibited, and even cities destroyed by natural disasters. The fact of comparing methodologically the assassination of John F. Kennedy with the Titanic, or Auschwitz, implies a great effort for researchers. This critical review demonstrates the prejudices that some ethnologists have about the phenomenon