The Spectacle of Past Violence: Travel Journalism and Dark Tourism

Abstract

Traveling to sites that relate to disaster, tragedy and death has become an established form of tourism. The aim of this chapter is to explain the conflicted role travel journalism can play in promoting this so-called dark tourism. The question is how travel journalists — who tend to focus on more positive, light-hearted stories — produce and negotiate the boundaries, motivations and ethics of this type of macabre tourism. As a case study, this chapter investigates the ways in which US-based travel journalists have participated in the public discourses that surround Tuol Sleng, a former Cambodian primary school that became a secret prison during the Khmer Rouge era and now exists as museum. Cambodia sits on the cusp of modernity, as tourists are lured to the country by the promises of exotic beauty but also by the darkness of a violent recent history, fueling a booming tourism industry that has led to real economic gains for the country (Chheang, 2009). By examining travel journalism articles +that document visits to and histories of the site, this chapter posits that travel journalism can operate as a realm of discursive practice that helps make sense of complex realities by offering, beyond tourism’s broader commercial concerns, a mode for engaging with dark sites that preserves empathy.