sightseers - the tourist as theorist

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Review: Sightseers: The Tourist as TheoristAuthor(s): Georges Van Den AbbeeleSource: Diacritics, Vol. 10, No. 4 (Winter, 1980), pp. 2-14Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/464862

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SIGHTSEERS:H E TOURISTA S THEORIST

GEORGESVAN DEN ABBEELE

Mankindalwayssets itself only such tasks as it can solve.-Karl Marx,Prefaceto A Critiqueof Political EconomyMaisles vraisvoyageurssont ceux-lkieuls qui partent Pour partir-CharlesBaudelaire,LeVoyage"

Dean MacCannell. THETOURIST:A NEWTHEORYOF THELEISURECLASS.New York:Schocken Books, 1976.Inan articleentitled "Semiotics:A Discipline or an InterdisciplinaryMethod?"[in Sight,Sound, and Sense, ed. T. Sebeok (Bloomington andLondon:IndianaUniversityPress,1978)], UmbertoEco states that "everydisciplineat a certainstageof its metatheoreticaldevelopmentshould beconcernedwith semiotic phenomena,and ifone does notwantto considersemiotics as a discipline per se, one should at least consider it as amethodological approach serving many disciplines" (p. 81). While onemay wince at the suggestion of semiotics as a kind of supradisciplinedominating the field of all others, there can be no doubt that one in-controvertible effect of Structuralismand its aftermath has been thesystematic putting into question of the pertinenceof the traditionalcate-gories and disciplinesof thought.If one could call such a movement a tradition, Dean MacCannell'sThe Touristwould fall squarely nto it. MacCannell'sprojectisto establishan "ethnographyof modernity"(a formulationwhich already questionsthe traditional lines of demarcation between the various social sciences

and especially the tenuous one between sociology and anthropology)bycallingon the semiologies of Peirce,Barthes,and Levi-Straussn the onehand, and on the sociologies of Durkheim,Veblen, and FrankYoungonthe other. The result is an extremelyusefuland fascinatingdiscoursebothin its attempt at the theoretical articulationof a semiological sociologyand in its often superb practicalanalysesof the particular bject of study,tourism.In the pursuitof this study, MacCannell is able to mobilize an ex-tensive collection of newspaperclippings,advertisements,excerptsfromtravel guides and brochures,oral and written commentaries by and ontourists,and numerousotherrecondite materials.Exemplaryn this regardis the chapter in which MacCannell reads a couple of early twentieth-century guidebooksof Paris n orderto decipherwhat sightstouristswentto see as well as how and why they saw them. That the Morgue, forinstance, should have been marked as a tourist attraction is not withoutcertain social and political implications: "Thedisplay of the corpses isostensibly for the purposeof their identification,but what is representedis the importanceof social order and of leaving society in an orderlyway,preservingone's identity to the very end" [p. 72]. That MacCannell'sanalyses are often reminiscent of Roland Barthes'Mythologies is notdiacritics/December 1980 3DIACRITICS Vol. 10 Pp. 02-140300-7162/80/0104-0002 $01.00 " 1980 by The JohnsHopkinsUniversityPress


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surprising given MacCannell's avowed indebtedness to Barthes. On the otherhand, MacCannell's heoretical entrenchmentin the earlyStructuralism f the fiftieswould make for the book's greatest flaw in the eyes of a contemporaryreader.MacCannellgives no indicationof havingread even the laterBarthes,much less theworkof the "Post-structuralists."nMacCannell'sdefense, however, it is important orecall that nearlyfive years have passed since The Tourist'spublication,which tookplace underconditions whichwould have madethe bookamplyradicalin the contextof contemporaryAmerican sociology. I also suspect that MacCannellhimself mayhave changed some of his strategiessince 1976. My aim then is to attempt less acritiqueof The Tourist han a rearticulationof some of its most interestingpoints inthe lightof morerecent criticaldevelopments.ForMacCannell, ourismis to be understood n termsof the "culturalproduction"aroundwhich it is organized:the tourist attraction.Basically,a touristattractionhasthreecomponents:a sight, a marker,anda tourist(MacCannell ateridentifies this tri-partitestructurewith that of Peirce'sconcept of the sign, i.e. as something (marker)representingomething sight) o someone (tourist)).The most important nd interestingcomponent of the touristattraction isthe marker,withoutwhich the touristwould notonly be unable to recognize the sight but the sight itself could not exist as such.Markerscan be either "on-sight" signposts, commemorative plaques, inscriptions,etc.) or "off-sight" postcards, picture books, advertisements).Sightseeing can beunderstood as a process whereby the tourist moves from markerto markeruntilreachingthe sight (or as MacCannellreformulates t, fromsignifierto signifieruntilreachinga signified).So sightseeingconstitutes a kindof basic narrative equence inwhich the tourist first hears or readsabout a sight throughan off-sight markerandthen follows the directionsgiven him by subsequent markersuntilarrivingat the on-sight markerswhich triggerhis recognitionof the sight.

Givensuch a conceptual framework, he establishmentof a semiotics of tourismrequiresthe development of a typology of markers,and such is what MacCannell'sbook aims to provide. Butnot only are sights markedin differentways but the veryprocessof producinga sight, which MacCannell erms "sightsacralization," nvolvesdifferenttypes of markings.Sightsacralizationconsists of five stages, each of which isdistinguishedbya specifictype of marker.Thesestages include1) naming;2) "framingand elevating" (the establishmentof an official boundaryaround the sight and itsbeing puton display);3) enshrinement(inwhich the framingmaterial tself is markedaccording to phase 1--an example would be when a building which encloses afamouswork of art becomes as muchof a sightas the workof artitself);4) mechanicalreproduction(prints,postcards, etc.); 5) social reproduction(the namingof groups,areas or cities after the sight). Sightsacralizationentails less something done to thesight than a proliferationof markerswhich point to the sight. But again it is not somuch the sight which produces markers or attractsattention)as it is the processofmarkingwhich producesthe sight (by pointing to it as something to be "seen" anddefining it thereforeas a "sight").But insofar as the marker"stands for"the sight, itcan not only replace the sight, it can even "obliterate" t (such as high-risetouristaccommodations which destroythe "natural" haracterof a setting which attractedthe tourists in the first place, or the historic battlefield in which there is literallynothing to see except its markers:a cemetery, monuments to famous generals,"thepolished cannon with its welded balls" Ip. 129]). Interestingly,areas supposedlylackingin touristattractionsare not in such a state, accordingto MacCannell,becauseof any intrinsic ackof sights but because the processesof markingare less developedthere. Butif the markingmarks he sightas such througha set of markers, t becomesdifficult to distinguish sight from marker.The markercan itself become a sight, andthe sight is inevitablyseen as a marked ite, one which, like the Saussurianign, existsonly because it is different from any other. MacCannellimplies such a differentialnotion of the sight although he never states it explicitly in such examplesas those hefinds ina travelbrochureputout bythe state of Iowa.Thatthese mundanesights(likethe glacier-formedgravel deposit) may attractfew if any visitors does not belie thefact that they are markedas touristattractions.4


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This semiological view of the tourist attraction is articulatedwithin a generalsociology of modernity,which is to explain the social function of tourism. Mac-Cannell'sbasic hypothesis is that concomitant with the transitionfroman industrialto a "postindustrial"ociety there has been a shift from work to leisureas the "centerof modern social arrangements" p. 5]. Traditionalsociology with its emphasis onwork relationsis thereforedeclared obsolete and must be replaced by a "sociologyofleisure"which is to study modern society as it is structuredaround "culturalpro-ductions."The latter "arevalued in-themselvesandarethe ultimatedepositof values,includingeconomic values, in modernsociety" [p. 28]. Theirvalue is not "determinedby the amount of labor requiredfor their production"but is "a function of thequantity and quality of experience they promise" [p. 23, MacCannell'semphasis].Accordingto MacCannell, t is throughthe accumulationof experiencesgleanedfromcultural interactionthat the individual is supposed to be able to situate himself insociety. Not only is the number of one's experiences a sign of one's social worth(peoplewith lots of experienceare consideredbetterthan those withfewer),butone'svery involvement in a culturalexperience is supposedto authenticateone's member-ship in the society inwhich this experiencetakes place.MacCannellcharacterizesthe act of sightseeingas "uniquelywell-suitedamongleisure alternatives to draw the tourist into a relationshipwith the modern socialtotality" since it allows him to "step out into the universal drama of modernity"(p. 7). Tourism s seen to fulfill the ideological function of palliatingthe individual'ssense of "alienation"1:

Although the tourist need not be consciously aware of this, the thing hegoes to see is society and its works. [. . .] Given the present sociohistoricalepoch, it is not a surprise to find that tourists believe sightseeing is a leisureactivity, and fun, even when it requires more effort and organization thanmany jobs. In a marked contrast to the grudging acquiescence that maycharacterize the relation of the individual to his industrial work, individualshappily embrace the attitudes and norms that lead them into a relationshipwith society through the sightseeing act. In being presented as a valuedobject through a so-called "leisure" activity that is thought to be "fun,"society is renewed in the heart of the individual through warm, open, un-questioned relations, characterized by a near absence of alienation whencompared with other contemporary relationships. This is, of course, the kindof relationship of individual and society that social scientists and politiciansthink is necessary for a strong society, and they are probably correct in theirbelief. [pp. 55-56]

Although MacCannell doesn't remarkon it here, the tourist'sactivity has taken onsome sinister connotations indeed. Thinkinghe is engaging only in his own pleasure,the tourist is unconsciously contributingto a "strongsociety." Tourismis thus aninstitutionalpractice which assures the tourist'sallegiance to the state throughanactivitywhich discreetlyeffaces whatevergrievances,discontent or "alienation" hatthe tourist might have felt in regards o society. The touristenslaves himself at thevery moment he believes himself to have attained the greatest liberty.Tourism,toparaphraseMarx, s the opiate of the (modern)masses. Furthermore,nstitutionalizedtourism establishes a double-edged imperialismsince it involves just as much animperialismover the foreign culture turned into a sight, an object of culturalcon-cumption, as an imperialismover the tourist himself who in practicingtourismun-wittinglycontributesto the modern state's power both over its own and over foreign1The sense of the word "alienation" undergoes considerable slippage in MacCannell'sdiscourse. Sometimes it is used in the technical Marxistdeterminationmeaning the worker'sseparationfromthe object of his labor;sometimes it is used in ageneralized and vague way torefer to the individual'sfeeling of being "out of place" or of "not belonging."At one point,MacCannelleven coins the phrase"alienated eisure" o describethe "perversion"f the aim ofleisurewhich takesplace when touristsvisit factoriesor other workplaces (p. 57).

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populations. Thestate can be seen to derivea certainsurplus-valuerom the tourist'stour of and then back into his society. The tourist"works"o the state's benefit and"strength."We have yet to understand,however, how the structureof touristic practiceworksand why it should producesuch unsavoryeffects. MacCannellspecifies:the integrationof the individualinto the modernworldrequire[s]only thatone attraction be linked to one other: a district to a community, or anestablishmentto adistrict,ora role to an establishment.Even f only asinglelinkage is graspedin the immediatepresent, this solitarylink is the startingpoint for an endless spherical system of connections which is society andthe world,with the individual at one point on its surface. [p. 56]

At least two comments about this statement are in order.First, he tourist's"integra-tion intothe modernworld" s accomplishedthroughan interpretive ct: the "linking"togetherof the attractionshe has seen into an imaginary ystemof relationships.Theresult of this interpretivework is a topographicalrepresentationwhich is necessarilyself-referential: he attractionsmust not only be linkedto each other, but each onemust also be linkedto a fixed point of reference,the tourist's"home,"since all ofthese attractionsmusthave at leastone characteristicn common-that of the tourist'shaving seen them. The implication then is that the tourist does not merely placehimself"atone point"on the surfaceof his sphereof experiences,but that he placeshimself at itscenter. It is in relationto himself that the touristordershis repertoireofattractions:"Theact of sightseeing is a kind of involvementwith social appearancesthat helps the personto construct totalities from his disparateexperiences.Thus,hislife and his society can appearto him as an orderlyseriesof formalrepresentations"(p. 15). This imaginaryconstructionof a universewhich revolves around himself isalso that which allows him to identify himself with his own society as opposed tothose in which he would be marked as a foreigner.The tourist produces what isvariouslycalled a worldview, a synthetic representation,or an ideology, the produc-tion of which is ideological insofaras it is the veryproductionof this ideology whichentrapsthe touristwithin a social order. MacCannell'sdiscussion remainsunclear,however, as to whether the tourist's interpretivevision is supposed to correspondpoint for point to a sytematized class or societal "worldview" or whether it is apurelypersonalizedrepresentation f his relationshipwith both his andothersocieties.In either case, we can be said to be dealing with a certain concept of ideology,whether it be, as in the firstcase, the traditionalMarxistone of a dominantsystemofideasor as in the second, the Althusserian nterpretation f ideology as a "representa-tion of the imaginaryrelationshipof individuals o theirrealconditionsof existence"["Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" n Lenin and Philosophy and OtherEssays,tr. B. Brewster New Yorkand London:Monthly Review Press,1971), p. 162;my italics].My second comment on the passage from MacCannellconcerns the stipulationthat the "linkages" he touristmakes be "grasped n the immediatepresent."Forthetourist to feel that he is no longer in a displaced, alienated or mediated relationshipwith society, his new perception of the world must be characterizedby the meta-physicalcategoriesof "immediacy," presence," nd what forMacCannells a keyword,"authenticity."Authenticityis what the tourist is supposed to find in the presenceofthe sight itself, whereas various kindsof markers such as pictures,writtendescrip-tions) are seen as "inauthentic"reproductions.Touristattractionsare also supposedto supplyan authenticitywhich is felt to be lacking nthe modernworld.Thisauthen-ticity of the sightallows the tourist to make utterances such as the following: "thisisthe very place the leaderfell; this is the actual pen used to sign the law; this is theoriginalmanuscript;his is an authenticTlingit ishclub; this is a realpiece of the trueCrownof Thorns"p. 14, MacCannell's mphasis).The illusion of authenticitydependsupon the tourist'sfeeling himself to be in an immediate relationshipwith the sight.This immediacy is assuredbythe sight'spresence,to which the touristcan point (this6


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presentabilityof the object is marked nthe above passagebythe preponderantuse ofthe deictic in the enunciationof authenticity).If the tourist'sappreciationof the sightis seen to be mediatedin some way, say throughan inordinateamount of advertising,then the sight comes to be seen as inauthenticor "staged."We know, however,fromthe semiotic analysis of the attraction that there can be no sight without a marker,that is without some form of mediation. Once a sight is markedas authentic (say anauthentic Frenchcaf6), it is by the very fact of its being markedno longer quiteauthentic (the caf6 is marked as special and therefore as distinct from all the other"authentic"Frenchcafes). Themarker,while constitutiveof the sightin its supposedlyunmediatedauthenticity, swhat,through he diacriticalact of itsmarking,perpetuallyremoves or defers the sight from any undifferentiatedimmediacy. As a result, thedistinction between "on-sight"and "off-sight"markersceases to be an absolute onesince even an "on-sight"marker s always already"off-sight"nsofar as it is able tosignifyor point to the sight, that is to be differentfrom the sight.On the other hand,the tourist can never possibly accede to the pure presence of the sight. All he everreceives in return or his pilgrimage o the sight is another marker.Totakean extremeexample, instead of a postcard showing the Rue de Rivoli, the touristonly gets thecornersignpost reading"Ruede Rivoli."Thentoo, there is alwaysthe possibilitythatthe marker is inaccurateor even purposefullymisleading, such as an inscriptionbearingfalse or even justunverifiablehistoricalinformation.What MacCannellrefersto as a "dialectics of authenticity"ensues in which the tourist's experiences areperceived as "shallow"because mediated or inauthentic, the effect of which is tofuel the desire fora more"real"or "authentic"experience.An example of how this dialectics of authenticityworkscan be seen in the caseof the tourist's relation to other tourists. The tourist's desire for authenticity is anindividualisticone in which he seeks to appropriate hat authenticityfor himself asopposed to the other tourists (who are seen simply as "thetourists"since the touristrarelyconsidershimselfto be one) who can render he sight inauthenticbytheir merepresence.This dilemma is complicated by the fact that once the sight is marked, t isalso markedas "forthe tourists,"and therefore as no longerauthentic. Thedesire forauthenticity however only leads to the markingof new sights which then becomeinauthenticthroughthe veryact of their being marked.Currentvisitorsto Parismayfind it fashionable, for example, to ignore famous sights such as the Eiffel Tower orthe Louvre n orderto find the "real"Frenchlife in little known partsof the city. Assuch a movement beginsto take place though, the sightsof that "real"or "authentic"Paris become themselves just another tourist attraction and therefore just as in-authentic. MacCannell is able to conclude in one of his boldest moves that thedenigrationof touristsand of tourism is "notan analytical reflection on the problemof tourism"but a "partof the problem" p. 10].It may now seem that tourism operates less to palliate than to exacerbatealienation as the tourist in his insatiable desire for immediacyand authenticityfindshimself enmeshed in the very web of mediacy and inauthenticityfrom which he istryingso hardto flee. Butas long as value is still placed on a notion of authenticity,the result of the dialectics of authenticity is the world-wide proliferationof sightsevidenced in moderntourism. Everything an be turned into a touristattractionandindeed must be if the ideological productionof ideology is to be keptgoing. More andmore sights must be markedoff in an endless differentiationof the habitable world.

And it is exactly as unlimited differentiation that MacCannell understandsmodernity in general. "Social structural" r "sociocultural"differentiation is a termused by MacCannell"to designate the totality of differences between social classes,life-styles, racial and ethnic groups,age grades (the youth, the aged), political andprofessionalgroupsand the mythic representationof the pastto the present" p. 11].Modernsocieties are consideredto be moredifferentiatedthan primitiveones, or tobe precise, modernity is the process of differentiation in which we find "elementsdislodged from theiroriginal,natural,historicaland culturalcontextsfit togetherwithother such displaced or modernizedthingsand people"[p. 13]. ForMacCannell, hisprocess representsnothing less than total revolution:diacritics/December 1980 7


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Modern culture is more revolutionary n-itself than the most revolutionaryconsciousness so fardevised. Everymajorsection of modernsociety-poli-tics, ethics, science, arts, leisure-is now devoted almost entirely to theproblemof keepingpace with this revolution. "TheRevolution" n the con-ventional, Marxist sense of the term is an emblem of the evolution ofmodernity. [pp. 12-13].

Modernity, for MacCannell,would seem to be a utopia of difference. Within thisframework, ourism is consideredto be a "ritualperformed o the differentiationsofsociety" [p. 13], and its purpose is the hopeless one of tryingto overcome the "dis-continuity of modernity" by "incorporating ts fragments into unified experience"[p. 13]. The differentiationsof society, it turnsout, not only have "the same structureas tourist attractions,"but "the differentiationsare the attractions"[p. 13]. As weremember, he sight is what is markedoff or differentiatedfrom its context as worthyof being seen. That hese differentiationsshouldbe the same as the socioculturaloneswhich constitute modern society is intriguingand poses some interesting prob-lems. Two questions in particulararise: 1) How can a phenomenon (the unlimitedproductionof differences)be seen as practically enslaving on the one hand, as ouranalysis of the ideological function of tourism would suggest, and as, in theory,liberatingon the other?2) Whichof the two, social structureortourism, is anterior oand grounds the other? Is tourism just an exemplary expression of society's deepstructure,or is it-as a key manifestationof social mobility-the drivingforce behindthe productionof differencesin a social structuredefined only by itsdifferentiations?Istourism, in otherwords, the societal process?These two questions, however, can only be answered if we can answer a third,namelythe relationinMacCannell'sdiscoursebetween hisanalysisof tourismand histheory of society, or if one prefersbetween his semiotics and his sociology. Whatinterestsme is not that MacCannell's bservationsof touristsshould have producedatheoryof tourism(thatwould be a banality)but that it should have producedso all-encompassing a theory of society. The problem is emblematized in the relationbetween the book'stitle (The Tourist)and its subtitle (A New Theoryof the LeisureClass). MacCannell remainswell aware of the difficulty of articulatingthese twostrandsin his discourse,and he repeatedlyattemptsto explain (away)their relation-ship fromthe firstpage of the introduction o his final section on "Theory."A glance at one of MacCannell's xplanationsmight be useful. On the firstpageof his book, MacCannell laimsto have undertakenhis research"withmuchdisregardfor theory." He describes his having heard Levi-Strauss tate the impossibility ofbroachingthe ethnographic study of modernitybecause of its overwhelmingcom-plexity.Taking his magisterialpronouncementon atheoreticalimpossibilityas a cue,MacCannell elt free to pursuehis analysisof tourism"outsideof existingtheoreticalframeworks" p. 2]. Such freedom from theory, however, was not to be had andMacCannellfound Structuralism nd the sociology of Durkheim"forced"upon him:"The more I examined my data, the more inescapable became my conclusion thattouristattractionsare an unplannedtypology of structures hat providesdirect accessto the modern consciousness or 'worldview,' that tourist attractionsare preciselyanalogous to the religioussymbolismof primitivepeoples" [p. 2]. Such a conclusionstems from a "theoretical ransfer"bywhich MacCannellmeans that a theorycapableof fittinga bodyof facts has unwittinglybeen found inanotherdiscipline,inthis case,that of structuralanthropology.Theappearanceof theory is excused in this narrativebecause of its coincidental relationshipwith MacCannell's tudy:"theexisting theorythat best fit my facts" [p. 2]. This coincidental relationship between theoreticalframeworkandempiricalobservationis posited,however,at the sametime as anotherin which the analysisof tourism is seen as a privilegedinvestigativeavenue allowing"directaccess"to "modernconsciousness."Theanalysisof tourismis to servethen asan "introduction o the structuralanalysisof modernsociety" [p. 3]. Tourism tself isto be the link between the factsof tourismand a general sociological theory.Thislinkis made explicit in MacCannell'sdefinitionof the wordtourist,where we see that the8


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relationshipbetween the two terms is made an aspect intrinsicto one of the terms."Tourist,"ays MacCannell,"is used to mean two things."The tourist is at once the"actual"tourist who goes sightseeing and "one of the best models available formodern-man-in-general"p. 1]. But if the tourist is exemplaryof modern man, it isbecause he is primarilyan interpretivecreature,whose activity as MacCannell's extunfolds becomes moreand moreexplicitly identified withthatof the social theorist orethnologist. The tourist'squest for authenticityand his productionof theory (in thelargest possible sense of the imaginaryconstruction of reality) parallel the socialscientist's search for authentic social data and his own productionof a theory toexplain it: "The sociologist and the tourist stare at each other across the humancommunity, each one copying the methods of the otheras he attemptsto synthesizemodern and traditional elements in a new holistic understandingof the humancommunity and its place in the modernworld"[p. 177]. The object of this study ontouristsbecomes the double of the subjectundertakinghat same study.The tourist isa social theorist avant la lettre, and if as we shall see he is considered inferior henonetheless hasthe benefit of anteriority:"Our irstapprehensionof modernciviliza-tion, it seems to me, emerges in the mind of the tourist"(p. 1, my emphasis). Thisapprehension, which is also the tourist's ideological construction of the world, isindistinguishablefrom a theory of social realityand thereby implicates the latter'sideological basis.Thetourists,concludes MacCannell,arealready "wayout ahead ofthe sociologists and anthropologists in their attempt to reconstructmodern socialstructure" p. 175]. Modern mass tourism is seen as a "multibilliondollar researchproject" p. 4].The tourist's heorizing,however,does not take place in a void; it is a responsetothe primaryactivityof the tourist,traveling.Histheorizing, nonetheless, always lagsbehind the voyaging, both temporallyand causally. Thetourist theorizes because heis alreadyen routeand caught up in a chaotic, fragmenteduniverse that needs to bedomesticated. The very concept of "the voyage" is this domestication in that itdemarcates one's travelinglike the Aristotelianplot into a beginning,a middle, andan end. In the case of the tourist, the beginningand the end are the same place,"home." It is in relationto this home or domus then that everythingwhich falls intothe middle can be "domesticated."Thiscircularstructureof referentiality s what wesaw in the production of touristic ideology. But again, that positing of a point oforigin which can be given the designation "home" is an eminently retrospectivegesture. The concept of home is only needed (indeed it can only be thought) whenhome has alreadybeen left behind. Rigorously peakingthen, one hasalways alreadyleft home, since home can only existat the priceof its being lost. Perhaps hat'swhyvoyages occasion such elaborate ritualssurroundingdeparturesand arrivals.Theserituals,in definingan incontestable pointof departureor home, functionto allay anyfears of not realizingwe were in transituntil too late, i.e. until afterwe had alreadybegun (orstopped). Ifthe "first tep"indomesticatingthe voyage is to posit a domus,then the takingof that "step,"instead of containing the voyage, prolongs it. Travelresistsany immediateperceptionof itself.Thebeginning,middle and end of a voyagecan only be assigned apres-coupand arbitrarily. f Igo on a planetripsomewhere, atwhat point should I say I begin it?When I board the plane?When it begins to taxi?When it takes off?When it reachescruisingaltitude?Or,when Icheck-inmy bagage?When Iarriveat the airport?When I leave home to go to the airport?When I firststepout the door?When I firststep out of bed?Argumentscould easily be made forall ofthese moments and others,but no matterwhen Idecide mytripis beginning,insomefashion it has already begun. Immediacyis denied by the fact that that cognition ofbeginninga voyage is always alreadymediated by the verymotion of the voyage.The ritualizingand/or institutionalizationof the voyage can also be an attemptto achieve a certainimmediacy(of knowledge,of presence)throughthe realizationofa priorlyconceived project.One attempts to circumventthe delay in cognition bybeingthere so to speakbefore one has begun,by preparing n "ambush" o thatwhenthe experiencetakes place it can be graspedas fully present.Touristsplantheirtripsin greatdetail often both to avoid the awkwardnessand embarrassment hat comesdiacritics/December 1980 9


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frombeing in a strangeplace andto be able to appreciate"more ully"whatthey see,that is to perceiveit more"authentically" r "theway itought to be seen."But all thispreparationo assurethe immediacyorauthenticityof the experienceonly renders tsoccurrenceall the more mediated and inauthenticas it has been mediatedbythe verypreparationdesignedto assure its immediateness.The fear of voyagingcan be deduced as the fearof mediationand all the more soif the voyage is undertaken as a quest for immediacy. The voyage is always whatstands between the voyagerandwhere he wants to go. Itmay be experiencedthen asa useless encumbranceor as somethingto be "gotten through"as quicklyas possible.Distance is felt as something to be reduced, a desire borne out by the continualdevelopmentof transportationechnology. Thedesireforauthenticity salso motivatedby a denial of mediation but as mediation isrequired nthe verymovementof seekingauthenticity,the resultis only an exacerbationof the inauthentic.The tourist'stheorythen is an attempt to stop the voyage, to domesticate it, tototalize its disparityinto a single representation,e.g., "My Trip o Paris."Everythingcan be collected into the circle of the tourist'sexperiencesbetween the beginningofhis journeyand its end, which closes the circle by the returnback to the beginning.back "home." The theory though is not only, as we have seen, inadequate to itsobject, the voyage, butfarfromstoppingthe movement of the voyage, the theorycanonly repeat it, coming as it does afterwardsand in a constant effort to keep up withthe voyage. In repeatingthe voyage, the theory can only prolong it. The "sphericalsystem of linkages" s qualified byMacCannellas "endless."Ourcircle has become aninfinitespiral.How then arewe to understand he tourist'srelationto society ifthe means of hisideological entrapment,a self-centered heoryof the world,can neverbe fullyrealizedor broughtto closure?To the degree that the tourist strengthensor shores up the

social structureby going outside of it, his marginalitybecomes centralto the main-tenance of the social order.Ifthe social order,however, is defined as unlimitedsocialstructural differentiation (motivated, as it is for the tourist, by a desire for theauthenticityhis very activity defers),and if "thedifferentiationsare the attractions,"then the touristcan be seen to be at the locus of productionof differences. Differenti-ation then is the markingprocess which progressively acralizesand devalues sightafter sight. And while MacCannell s rightto point out that "no person or agency isofficially responsiblefor the worldwideproliferationof touristattractions" p.45], therole the touristplays in the structureof the attractionimpliesthat both "society"andthe individual touristare implicated in the markingprocess (the formerthroughtheinstitutionalizationnot only of sights but of tourismin general;the latter hroughthedisplacement of markershis activity implies-in other words, his activity is also amarking)and that neither is fully in controlof it. Thetouristre-inscribes ach markerin a particular tineraryof sights to be visited, but that reinscriptionof the marker sas much a displacement and an inscriptionelsewhereof the marker s it isa repetitionof itwhich is seen to affirm he institutionalcharacterof the sight.Tourism s then notonly a "ritualperformed o the differentiationsof society" butthe actual productionof those differences. The tourist would be at the cutting edge of the productionofsocial realityinsofaras he re-markshe sight in his pilgrimage o it. Hecan even markthe sight literally by carvinghis initials into it. He can also disperse markersof thesight (by sendingsouvenirsand postcards o his acquaintances)as well as provide hesightwith a new marker n hisvery person-that he went theresignifiesto othersthatthere is something to see there. It is worth noting in this regardthat the five-stagesequence of markingswe saw in the processof sight sacralization is a movement out-wardsand awayfromthe "original" ight.The politics of this productionof social realityas a kind of figuraldisplacementdepends upon the relationestablished between sightand marker.When sight is privi-leged over marker, he movements of the markingprocess can be easily totalizedthroughthe by now familiarfigureof the sphere,at whose center standsthe "sacra-lized"sightto which all its markerspoint. Institutionalizedourismdepends uponthisprivilegingof the sight: it is not enough to reador hearabout a particularattraction,10


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but one must go through the trouble and expense of going to see it, of putting oneselfin its presence. That totalizing figure can be deconstructed by a reversal and displace-ment of the sight/marker opposition. Such a deconstruction is broached though notpursued by MacCannell when he insists on the constitutive status of the marker forthe sight. A radical politics would then contest the institution of tourism by assertingthe supplementary character of the marker. The marker follows the logic of the sup-plement to the extent that the marker is extrinsic to the "pure"sight-the signpost, forinstance, which designates a particular attraction is not supposed to be part of the at-traction and is often seen as "detracting from" the sight, especially in the case of a"natural wonder," since the sign inevitably attracts attention to itself as it attracts at-tention to the sight. But it is also what comes to fill a deficiency intrinsic to the sight(for without the marker, the sight cannot attract attention to itself, cannot be "seen"and therefore cannot be a "sight"). A chain of supplementarity is established in the in-evitable proliferation of markers (in the sight's sacralization) as each marker stands forthe other, indecidably replacing it and adding to it. The affirmation of the supplementalplay of marking would be radical to the extent that it contests the elision of markerinto sight which institutionalized tourism presupposes and which allows it to valuethe sight's presence. The totalizing figure of the sphere would become a dispersedconstellation of markers in which each marker refers to another in an infinite chain ofreference.As for the activity of the tourist, if the circularity of his journey out of and thenback into society (re)produces its ideology, it can only do so through the implicitcritique of that ideology in the movement outward and the implicit revision, be it everso discreet, of the ideology in the activity that (re)produces it. On the one hand, thetourist is motivated to leave by a sense of the inauthenticity of his own milieu. On theother hand, it can be asked whether the tourist is ever fully re-integrated into society,that is if he ever fully returns from his trip. Not only may his home have changed inthe course of his trip, but the tourist's perception of home may have changed and hemay return home with a "foreigner's perspective" on it. This is perhaps the moment toremember that not everyone has either the political right or the economic means totravel. Travel is expensive and it often involves complex legal interactions such aspassports, visas and quarantines, to name the most common. MacCannell's worktherefore can only treat the "leisure class." But if traveling is relatively restricted, itmust be because of some danger it poses to society's integrity. And if one must acceptMacCannell's notion of an "alienated leisure" then one must credit its worker, thetourist, with at least the possibility of revolutionary action. This necessity of posingthe possibility of a "revolutionary tourist" is certainly not the least interesting orcurious implication of MacCannell's text.We can see then that the anteriority of the tourist to the social theorist is nolonger accidental but structural, for tourism would be where the social structure isproduced, and social science in its attempt to reconstruct that structure can only lagbehind, no matter how quickly it follows upon the tourist's trail. Social theory willthen merely repeat the tourist's ideology just as MacCannell's social theory repeats histheory of tourism. As for the latter, it cannot even constitute the object of its study inany pure form. A semiotics of touristic activity (that is to say, of a certain interpretiveactivity) cannot help but reflect back on and undermine the status of the semiotician-social theorist (i.e. MacCannell) insofar as he cannot differentiate in any significantway his activity from that of the tourists. Here, we begin to see the necessity ofestablishing an all-encompassing theory (such as MacCannell's) capable of includingall possible tourist theories. What is at stake then is less the ideology of tourism thanthe ideological function of theory.The relationship between tourism and theory is neither one of contingency norone which unproblematically allows for "direct access" to the truth of the latterthrough the mere observation of the former. Rather it is MacCannell's reflection onthe empirical facts of modern travel practices which leads him to posit a theory ofsociety which is less a social theory than a theory of travel: modernity as unlimitedstructural differentiation driven by a quest for authenticity-a perpetual narrative ofdiacritics/December 1980 11


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adventure. The theoretical "transfer" MacCannell speaks of is testimony to theinevitable intrusion of travel into any discussion of it. What we are left with is a(discursive) voyage between theory and practice, that voyage being the (theoretical)practice which disallows the primacy of either one. In the relation between tourismand theory, one cannot talk about the one without immediately drifting into theother. What is interesting is not that travel reflects more general social or ideologicalstructures but that the movement from one to the other can be made so easily and soassuredly. In other words, wherever one turns one finds oneself caught up in the verymovement of travel one is trying to relate to some other level of conceptualizationand yet that movement is readily denied its unsettling complexity. Nothing is morebanal than the "theme" of the voyage, and yet nothing is more difficult to define inany rigorous fashion. Indeed, travel cannot be thought in isolation, for it inevitablyresists any confining definition (to define from definere-the setting up of boundaries,enclosures) since it can only be thought of as a crossing of boundaries. Discourse ontravel can only produce a meta- or theoretical discourse, one that must talk about itsdefinition of travel as the narrative of defining, as the circuitous trajectory around theperiphery that plants the boundary markers prior to any possible recognition of thespace of enclosure. It is radically impossible to talk about travel in empirical terms nomatter how clearly and unproblematically the category of the voyage presents itself toour intuition. The ease with which we think we know what travel is may be thegreatest impediment to any rigorous study of it. Travel is also therefore the categorywhich is the easiest to overlook or to elide. On the other hand, theoretical discoursecannot in its own turn circumvent the question of travel. The metaphorics of thevoyage is the privileged discursive mode in which theoretical discourse takes place(since Plato, or even Heraclitus, in philosophy; since Homer in literature). This is not,however, to privilege travel as some extra-linguistic or theological principle. Rather itis to concede that any reflection on or theory of voyages must inevitably follow acertain itinerary, undertake its own voyage and thereby undermine the integrity of itsobject of study. (This problem resembles the one encountered in the study of languageinsofar as that study begins and generally takes place in language.) Nor do I wish tosuggest that only travel (or language) poses this same problem.What is the difference, then, between tourist and theorist? It is in the finalchapter of his book that MacCannell must confront this problem, which has beenraised implicitly throughout his study and which threatens to dislodge the assurednessof his own position as ethnographer or social theorist writing on tourism. To save thisposition, MacCannell must reject one of the principal strategies which has allowedhim to produce a strong reading of tourism, that of siding with the tourist against hisdetractors, who, as we have seen, react against the tourist only to protect their own(or what they refuse to see as their own) brand of tourism. MacCannell even goes sofar on several occasions as to make explicit the comparison between his activity andthat of the tourist. The upshot has been the radical thesis of the tourist's anteriority tothe social theorist, to the grounding of the latter's theory in the former's theorizing.Nevertheless, in the closing pages of his analysis, MacCannell reasserts the eth-nographer's superiority through the introduction of the opposition between consciousand unconscious: the social scientist is aware of what he is doing whereas "the touristremains mystified as to his true motives, his role in the construction of modernity"[p. 178]. The construction of modernity is again the unlimited production of dif-ferences, which appears as theoretically liberating and practically enslaving. We nowsee the reason for this contradiction. The tourist is seen to be enslaved by and throughthe practice of his theorizing because he is unconscious of it whereas the samepractice is equated with freedom by the social thinker because he is not "mystified."The status of these oppositions can be schematized as follows:

TheoristFreedomConsciousTheory of Practice

TouristSlaveryUnconsciousPractice of Theory

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The hierarchical neatness of these oppositions is put into question by two examples,one of an ethnographer, one of a tourist, one at the beginning of the book, the otherat its close. The latter involves a tourist whose report on the Shetland Islands "getsdown to the hard business of ethnographic description" [p. 175] including sections onthe islands' prehistory, culture history, ceremony and ritual, cottage industry andeconomy, language, cooking, games, and cosmology. The result is a travel reviewindistinguishable from an anthropological monograph. On the other hand, we arepresented at the beginning of the book with an ethnologist, Claude Levi-Strauss,whose celebrated diatribe against travel books in Tristes Tropiques would, followingMacCannell's thesis, earmark him as a tourist par excellence. As for his unconsciousadherance to the most traditional positions of Western metaphysics, that too hasbeen amply demonstrated [Cf. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, tr. G. Spivak(Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974, pp. 101-140].The distinction between tourist and theorist is all the more difficult to sustain ifone remembers that the first definition of the word theory cited by the 0.E.D. is "asight, a spectacle" from the Greek the6ria meaning the same. The theorist is as muchof a "sightseer" as the tourist. Perhaps that is why Lewis Coser in a statement reprintedon The Tourist's back cover qualifies the book as "a heady mixture of acute observa-tions and acute theoretical vision" (my emphasis). The pun may seem less spurious ifwe remember that MacCannell notes at least one kind of sightseeing which isspecifically directed towards watching the tourists who are seeing a sight [pp. 130-31],the very activity involved in writing a book on tourists, on developing a theory oftourists and a theory of society capable of explaining their behavior. The theorist(whose proper name we can now read as that of MacCannell) is as much of a sightseeras the tourist in his desire to make present to himself a conceptual schema whichwould give him immediate access to a certain authenticity (the "real nature" of hisobject of study). The theorist's pretention is even greater though than that of seeing asight, for he wants to be a seer in another sense of the word as well, someone whoknows. He not only wants to see the sights, he wants to possess them and his fellowsightseers through his superior knowledge. No matter how much he may comparehimself to a tourist or ridicule the "moral superiority" of those who look down ontourists, MacCannell must inevitably assert the superiority of his own theoreticalvision as being the more complete, the more correct, and the more authentic.What we have encountered then in the case of the tourist as well as of the (social)theorist is theory understood as a stopgap which attempts to restrain and contain acertain traveling which always exceeds it. Ideology is not so much the theorizing as itsproduct, the theory, whose self-referential structure defines the theorist's place insociety as a fixed place in a fixed society. That this theory or ideology be a theory ofunlimited social structural differentiation changes nothing, for nothing is so totalizingas a concept of differentiation--nor so apt to be undermined by the very play ofdifferences it attempts to name and de-limit.2 Rather the ideological structure oftheory must be questioned in its very presupposition of a fixed position or "home" inrelation to which all else can be subordinated, domesticated. The theories of bothtourist and theorist assume such a position. But if the tourist's home is forever lost andcan never be refound, and if the theorist's position is eroded and undermined by thevery object of his theory, then we must cease to think either theory or travel inrelation to some fixed place. Comforting notions of positionality must give way towhat can be called after Gilles Deleuze "nomadic thought," one which would nolonger know the concept "home." Such an instability could no longer even beunderstood as travel, for nomadism is not to be confused with a simple privileging ofmotion per se. Rather it is what renders impertinent the very opposition between restand motion, between home and travel: "the nomad is not necessarily someone who

21t is instructive to consider Derrida'srejection of the term, differentiation:"such a wordwould suggest some organic unity, some primordial and homogeneous unity, that wouldeventually come to be divided up and take on difference as an event" ["Differance"n Speechand Phenomena and OtherEssayson Husserl'sTheoryof Signs,tr. D. Allison(Evanston:North-western UniversityPress,1973),p. 143].diacritics/December 1980 13


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moves; there are some voyages in place [des voyages sur placel" [Gilles Deleuze,"Pens&enomade," in Nietzsche aujourd'hui?Paris:U.G.E.10/18, 1973), p. 174; mytranslation].The nomad can no more be said to be moving than not moving sincethere is no longerany fixed point of referencein regards o which movement can beeither perceivedor measured.3Perhapsthe distinction to be made then is not between different notions oftheory, but between theory and its Other,not exactly practice(forthe preeminentlytheoretical gesture of insistingonly on practice is often only a way of denying byproclamation one's own theoretical presuppositions)but theorizingas practice.4Anomadic theorythen, or a theorizingwithout theory, if such is even possible, wouldaffirm the supplemental play of markingand travel from inauthentic marker toinauthenticmarkerwithoutfeelingthe need to possessthe authenticsightbytotalizingthe markers nto a universaland unmediatedvision.

30n the figureof the nomad in philosophy, see also DominiqueGrisoni,ed. Politiquesde laphilosophie (Paris:Grasset,1976).4The distinction between theory and theorizing is drawnon the analogy of Louis Marin'sdistinction between utopia and utopian practice [Utopiques: Jeuxd'espaces (Paris:Minuit,1973)].Thelatteris the fictionalprocessor "playof epistemological spaces"wherebythegivensof social realityare neutralized,allowing fora radicalcritiqueof society. A new configuration,however, is defined in the utopia itself which institutionalizesthrough ts totalizing representa-tion a new social realityand ideology. Theproblemthen is thatof formulatinga radicalpracticewhich does not by virtueof its veryformulationbecome a new institution.

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sightseers - the tourist as theorist

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