Postcolonial ambivalence as per the tourist

Abstract

This article aims to understand the ways in which ambivalence toward postcolonial mimetic places is exposed in touristic consumption. This article is a single case study investigating Bà Nà Hills, which was initially constructed by the French colonialists and afterwards developed into an entertainment park in Vietnam. Ethnographic research by using face-to-face techniques such as in-depth interviewing and participant observation was undertaken. Findings show the ways in which ambivalent emotional subjectivities coexist between ‘searching for authenticity’ and ‘embracing simulacra’. This article proposes that a postcolonial equivocatory place generates and regulates tourists' ambivalence between the complexities of authenticity and simulacra and that, ambivalence functions as a bridge and an interpretive and analytic tool between individual emotional experience and social changes.