“We Invite You for Lunch”: Post/Colonial Subjectivities and Performances of Tourism in Puducherry, India

Abstract

Summary Tourism is contested, as Edward Bruner suggests. These contestations may not always take the form of overt conflicts between actors and/or institutions. They may operate in silent pauses and gaps, performances of the actors involved, their identifications and agencies and constructed meanings. In my research, I focus on the town of Puducherry, a French colony merged with India in 1962, to engage with the discourse of authenticity in which the hosts take part. By positioning myself as both tourist and ethnographer, I delve into the complexities of post/colonial subjectivities and performances of identity in Puducherry, with a focus on the Franco-Pondicherrian community who, through their performances reproduce the authentic and reclaim their collective identity. In the process, the members of the community, who are also the hosts in this context, become both the gatekeepers of authenticity and the toured. Using the idea of staged authenticity in a social constructionist frame, I engage with how hosts stage cultural performances in the intimate space of their home which works to make the tourist aware of their cultural heritage and abets their identity practices. Information © The Author 2023