Spectral Touring: Subject, Consumption, and the ‘Wound’ of the Photograph

Abstract

This paper takes as theme the notion of ‘touring consumption,’ and argues its case with reference to the field of ‘tourism studies.’ Let me commence in the way of reflecting on this placement. It might safely be argued that ‘tourism studies’ have a defiantly inter-disciplinary make. As a field of knowledge it prompts a pulse of tension as it struggles to get a foothold in a realm where disciplinary boundaries are jealously kept, John Urry’s founding text (Urry 1990) says as much. Tourism studies have also been a refuge for interdisciplinary travelers, for it potentially keeps a menacing force within itself, the force of asking questions that are general enough to encroach on other epistemic territories. The ‘touring subject’ may become a general description for the ‘subject as such,’ especially in the postmodern condition. But does this force of generality also not make it difficult for tourism studies to demarcate its own specificity as a discipline?

I thank everyone present during my presentation at the conference ‘Touring Consumption 2013’organized and hosted by the Karlshochschule International University, in Karlsruhe, Germany in 2013. I thank the organizers for supporting the trip with the ‘Karlshochschule Mobilities Grant’. This is a very different paper from the one I presented at that occasion, but one that tries to incorporate a few key concerns that cropped up in the course of the conference itself. Most important of which, for me, was a need for a thorough conceptual figuring of the idea of the ‘touring subject,’ especially in light of postmodern and post-structuralist theory. I have tried to address the issue here.