The hauntology of climate change: glacier retreat and dark tourism

Abstract

In recent decades, glaciers have become infamous symbols of climate change, and as they thaw and retreat, they leave behind haunted spaces favorable for the development of dark tourism practices. Commemorative plaques and funerals, but also comparative before-and-after photographs, on-site interpretative boards indicating where glaciers used to be 20, 50 or 100 years ago, as well as more recent developments of virtual reality (VR) tools all participate in the production of specters of vanished glaciers. These all constitute practices where gone glaciers must live in the present. In parallel, little empirical evidence demonstrates if tourists engaging in glacier tourism develop follow-up pro-environmental behaviors, and if they do, if this lasts in the long-term. In this conceptual article, we contend that reframing glacier tourism as a form of dark tourism may transform people relationship with glaciers and speed up conservation efforts. Our analytical basis is grounded in Derrida’s framework of hauntology, wherein glaciers are considered as geographical specters (or ghosts), neither invisible nor visible, dead nor alive. This work critically explores the complex connections between dark tourism, glacier retreat and spectral geographies, and argues that framing glacier tourism as dark tourism can improve tourists’ pro-environmental behavior changes, as well as expand climate change discourses, ethics, and politics.