Description
The purpose of this paper is to propose voyeurism as one possible lens to analyse the
experiential nature of dark tourism in places of socio-political danger, thus expanding psychoanalytic
understandings of those who travel to a ‘‘dark’’ place.
International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research
Dark tourism and voyeurism: tourist arrested for “spying” in Iran
Dorina Maria Buda Alison J ane McIntosh
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Dorina Maria Buda Alison J ane McIntosh, (2013),"Dark tourism and voyeurism: tourist arrested for “spying” in Iran", International J ournal of
Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research, Vol. 7 Iss 3 pp. 214 - 226
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Avital Biran, Kenneth F. Hyde, (2013),"New perspectives on dark tourism", International J ournal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality
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Philip Stone, (2013),"Dark tourism scholarship: a critical review", International J ournal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research, Vol. 7
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Dark tourism and voyeurism: tourist
arrested for ‘‘spying’’ in Iran
Dorina Maria Buda and Alison Jane McIntosh
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose voyeurism as one possible lens to analyse the
experiential nature of dark tourism in places of socio-political danger, thus expanding psychoanalytic
understandings of those who travel to a ‘‘dark’’ place.
Design/methodology/approach – Freud’s and Lacan’s theories on voyeurism are used to examine the
desire to travel to and gaze upon something that is (socially constructed as) forbidden, such as a place
that is portrayed as being hostile to international tourists. A qualitative and critical analysis approach is
employed to examine one tourist’s experience of travelling to Iran and being imprisoned as a result of
taking a photograph of what he thought was a sunrise but also pictured pylons near an electrical plant.
Findings – The authors’ analysis of the experiences of this tourist in Iran reveals that tourism, in its
widest sense, can be experienced as ‘‘dark’’ through the consumption and performance of danger. This
?nding moves beyond the examination of dark tourism merely as ‘‘tourist products’’, or that frame a
particular moment in time, or are merely founded on one’s connection to or perception of the site.
Research limitations/implications – Whilst the authors recognise the limitations of the case study
approach taken here, and as such, generalisations cannot be inferred fromthe ?ndings, it is argued that
there is merit in exploring critically the motivational and experiential nature of travel to places that may be
considered forbidden, dangerous or hostile in an attempt to further understand the concept of dark
tourism from a tourist’s lived perspective.
Originality/value – As the authors bring voyeurism into the debate on dark tourism, the study analyses
the voyeuristic experiences of a dark tourist. In short, the authors argue that the lived and ‘‘deviant’’
experiential nature of tourism itself can be included in the discussion of ‘‘dark tourism’’.
Keywords Tourism, Experience, Dark tourism/tourist, Emotions, Online interviewing, Psychoanalysis,
Voyeurism
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
A British tourist was locked up for 58 days in a hellish Iranian jail – for taking [a] photo. Andrew
Barber, 43, was accused of spying because the snap – meant to be of a sunrise – showed pylons
near a power plant. Cops then searched his laptop and found photos Andrew had taken of
buildings in Iraq where he had worked for delivery ?rm DHL. They thought he had taken them in
Iran, and accused him of espionage. A judge then threw him into Tehran’s notorious Evin prison,
which houses political detainees – some awaiting execution (O’Shea, 2010, para. 1-3).
Andrew Barber travelled to Iran in June 2010; three weeks into his trip he was arrested by
Iranian military. He was kept in a prison for approximately two months under allegations of
espionage. In this paper we examine a tourist’s ‘‘dark’’ experience in Iran, a country for
which most governments issue travel restrictions. This dark experience is investigated
through the lens of the psychoanalytic concept of voyeurism and draw on excerpts from a
series of online interviews with the tourist. We frame our analysis of Andrew’s story within the
sub-?eld of dark tourism. His case was presented in the August 2010 edition of the Sun
Magazine, from which we quote the above excerpt. It is maintained in that article, and
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VOL. 7 NO. 3 2013, pp. 214-226, Q Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1750-6182 DOI 10.1108/IJCTHR-07-2012-0059
Dorina Maria Buda is a
Senior Lecturer at the
Hospitality Business
School, Saxion University of
Applied Sciences,
Deventer, The Netherlands.
Alison Jane McIntosh is a
Professor in the Tourism
and Hospitality
Management Department,
University of Waikato
University, Hamilton, New
Zealand.
The authors wish to express
their gratitude to Andrew
Barber for sharing his story with
them.
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con?rmed by Andrew in our interviews, that the main reason for his imprisonment was taking
a photograph of a sunrise, which also showed pylons near an Iranian power plant.
Voyeurism, understood as the drive to look at something forbidden, led to the tourist being
imprisoned and charged with espionage. In psychoanalysis, voyeurism is understood
together with its counterpart – exhibitionism – as being the active and passive aspects of
the drive to look or scopophilia (Freud, 1938, 1984; Lacan, 1977a, b). Voyeuristic behaviour
explains a drive connected to the desire for mastery and desire to know. In this paper, we
use Freud’s and Lacan’s theories on voyeurism to examine the desire to travel to and gaze
upon something that is (socially constructed as) forbidden, like a place that is portrayed as
being hostile to international tourists. However, while this paper employs voyeurism theory
(especially in terms of forbidden drive and desire), it examines the object of darkness rather
than the object of sexual fantasy as prioritised in previous studies (Lisle, 2004).
As we bring psychoanalysis into the debate on dark tourism, our main aim in this paper is to
expand voyeuristic and/or experiential understandings of those who travel to a ‘‘dark’’ place.
Speci?cally, recounting the experiences of one tourist, we contribute to emerging accounts
in tourism studies that present personalised versions of situated and contextualised
research (Buda and McIntosh, 2012; Morgan and Pritchard, 2005; Tucker, 2009). We also
respond to the call for a reconceptualisation of dark tourism based on empirical evidence of
tourists’ visits to sites of death/violence in which the tourist is involved in ‘‘negative’’,
‘‘deviant’’ behaviour (Biran and Poria, 2012). Psychoanalysis in general and voyeurism in
particular have seldom been used by tourism researchers. Conversely, other ?elds of study,
for example geography (see Bondi, 1999; Callard, 2003; Kingsbury, 2003, 2004, 2009a, b;
Pile, 1996; Sibley, 2003) have drawn more con?dently on psychoanalytic theories of Freud,
Lacan, Winnicott, Kristeva and Irigaray to the extent that ‘‘n the last decade, social and
cultural geography has experienced a ‘psychoanalytic turn’’’ (Callard, 2003, p. 295). Such
authors have not only employed psychoanalytic theories to examine ‘‘imperfect’’ and
‘‘deviant’’ others, but also argue that psychoanalysis is useful in addressing socio-political
injustices. In this respect, Sibley (2003) maintains that ‘‘psychoanalysis lends itself to politics
and that prominent practitioners have not been averse to applying theory to political
critique’’ (p. 396). In tourism studies we seek to open for discussion Freud’s and Lacan’s
theories on voyeurism as useful tools to understand some tourists’ performances in dark
places. In doing so we launch a call for tourism researchers to engage critically and more
hopefully with the ?eld of psychoanalysis.
Dark tourism and voyeurism
The sub-?eld of dark tourism has received considerable attention over the last few years
(Dann, 1998; Dann and Seaton, 2001; Lennon and Foley, 2000; Lisle, 2007; Seaton, 1996,
1999, 2009; Seaton and Lennon, 2004; Sharpley, 2005, 2009; Sharpley and Stone, 2006, 2009,
2011; Stone and Sharpley, 2008; Strange and Kempa, 2003). Seaton (2009) argues that, two
decades ago, tourism practices associated with death, disaster and atrocity resided in a big
lacuna. Nowadays it has caught the attention of both the academic world and that of the wider
public. There is an eclectic and disparate range of terminology that shows researchers’
growing interest in death-related tourism, such as ‘‘thanatourism’’ (Dunkley, 2007; Seaton,
1996), ‘‘macabre form of special interest tourism’’ (Warner, 1999) ‘‘dark tourism’’ (Lennon and
Foley, 2000), ‘‘morbid tourism’’ (Blom, 2000), ‘‘grief tourism’’ (Sharpley, 2005), ‘‘battle?eld
tourism’’ (Dunkley et al., 2011), and ‘‘war tourism’’ (Smith, 1998).
Thanatourism is de?ned by Seaton (1996) as being ‘‘travel to a location wholly, or partially,
motivated by the desire for actual or symbolic encounters with death’’ (p. 240). Lennon and
Foley (2000) use the term ‘‘dark tourism’’ and limit the boundaries of the concept to events
that happened in the twentieth century and that pose questions to the project of modernity.
Sharpley (2005) proposes a matrix with shades of grey tourism ranking from pale to black
depending on supply and demand. Other authors have employed these de?nitions to
examine the phenomena under analysis in their respective case studies (Preece and Price,
2005; Smith and Croy, 2005; Warner, 1999).
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The generic phrase ‘‘dark tourism’’ has gained broader acceptance in the literature than, for
instance, the more technical term ‘‘thanatourism’’ (Smith and Croy, 2005). The relative
simplicity of the term‘‘dark tourism’’ is in contrast with the multiplicity of aspects that de?ne this
concept and the potential deviant components of the tourism experience. Seaton (1999)
contends that the difference lies not on a linguistic level, as the debate is not over which word
best relays the meaning of the same concept. Thanatourism and dark tourism are two related
concepts but different in their employment of the temporal aspect. Dark tourismhas been said
to refer to fascination with death, disaster and atrocity as an explicit motivation to travel,
together with aspects of memoralisation, commodi?cation and industrialisation being an
intimation of postmodernity. For thanatourism, pilgrimage represents the earliest form of travel
associated with death and hostility. Interest in disaster and death as part of the travelling
experience is not a phenomenon of the post/modern but of the pre-modern world, since
people have long travelled to battle?elds, cemeteries, mausoleums, or death/murder sites.
Thanatopsis, contemplation of death, has always been present in human life, more so from
the Middle Ages to the mid-nineteenth century, when it was well supported by symbolic
representations and material objects meant to keep thoughts on death live in people’s
awareness. The concept of thanatopsis also refers to the factors that generate these
thoughts and the response to these stimuli; thus, it is an overarching concept that includes
thoughts on one’s own death as well as death of others, irrespective of the distance in time
and space. ‘‘Dark tourism is a travel dimension of thanatopsis’’, which Seaton (1996, p. 240)
calls thanatourism. Drawing on De Quincey’s article ‘‘On murder considered as one of the
?ne arts’’ (cited in Seaton, 1996), the author further presents that interest in death is a taste
shared by most humans to a greater or lesser extent. The premise underlying both De
Quincey’s article and tourismrelated to death, disaster and hostility, Seaton (1996) argues, is
the ‘‘act or event which might be deplorable or repugnant from a moral point of view could
have considerable attraction as a spectator experience’’ (p. 234). Debates about the ‘‘dark’’
nature of, or motives for, tourism thus abound.
The advanced technological devices and methods that have contributed to the collapse of
time and space have helped spread this phenomenon, bringing death, disaster and atrocity
live into people’s homes and in their living memory. Media, movies, and breaking news,
amongst others, help stimulate dark tourism, and the global-local juxtaposition represents a
drive to this phenomenon. Therefore, ‘‘dark tourists’’ cannot be totally divorced from the
viewing public, who incorporats these media commoditisations into their lives and later seek
tourist experiences to feed the sense of ‘‘familiarity’’ provided by the media. Of particular
relevance to this paper, the intensi?cation of globalisation and circulation of con?ict-zone
images within the news media have made almost ‘‘every part of the world instantly
recognizable, accessible and understandable’’ (Lisle, 2007, p. 334). This is especially so with
‘‘hostile’’ and ‘‘unwelcome’’ places of war and con?ict, as people have been bombarded ever
since the war in Vietnam with constant ‘‘war-zone’’ news. This familiarity has brought about
increased interest in tourism to regions promoted in breaking news reports. Such interests
have, in turn, been pejoratively labelled as ‘‘deviant’’ and ‘‘voyeuristic’’. Indeed, Lisle (2007), in
her chapter on ‘‘Defending voyeurism: dark tourism and the problem of global security’’,
argues that this supposedly deviant and voyeuristic behaviour represents what is ‘‘most
provocative and challenging about Dark Tourism’’ (p. 336).
To evaluate this voyeuristic behaviour, a limited number of previous scholars have drawn on
psychoanalysis in their tourism research (Kingsbury and Brunn, 2003, 2004; Lisle, 2004,
2007; Uriely et al., 2011). Kingsbury and Brunn (2003, 2004), for example, use Freud’s and
Lacan’s psychoanalytic concepts of ‘‘symptom’’, ‘‘ego’’, ‘‘defense’’ and ‘‘fantasy’’ to analyse
12 travel magazines from the USA in the ?ve months following the events of 11 September
2001. These approaches enable authors to theorise ‘‘the uncanny disjunctures between the
exotic, vulnerable, terrorized, and sunny tourist worlds that traversed the pages of the
post-September 11 travel magazines’’ (Kingsbury and Brunn, 2003, p. 40). Examining a
phenomenon related to the same 11 September incident, Lisle (2004) discusses the viewing
platform at Ground Zero in New York as a site of voyeurism and spectacle. The author
analyses ‘‘discourses of voyeurism and authenticity through the work of Baudrillard, Debord
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and Bauman in an effort to position the tourist as a signi?cant political subject’’ (Lisle, 2004,
p. 3). Uriely et al. (2011) also use psychoanalytic theories in a tourism context. The authors
explore deviant tourist behaviour using the concepts of Id instincts of sex, aggression and
Superego conceptualised by Freudian psychoanalysis.
The present paper seeks to continue the approach adopted in these studies and, in so doing,
draws on the concept of voyeurism to examine one tourist’s motivation to travel to Iran and the
‘‘negative deviance’’ of his lived experience there. In this way, the embodied, emotional,
experiential and often unexpected nature of the tourist encounter becomes important in
(re)conceptualising dark tourism. Indeed, this case study research attends to the relationships
between the tourist and the site attributes; more speci?cally, that the nature of the tourist
experience is one of ‘‘negative deviance’’ and ‘‘negative’’ social consequences for the tourist.
As such, the case study research presented here provides empirical evidence of dark tourism
as de?ned by Biran and Poria (2012); namely, that dark tourism relates ‘‘to visits to sites of
death and violence in which the visitors are involved in negative deviant behaviours’’ (p. 70).
Thus, dark tourismis viewed in a social context (rather than about death per se) and in line with
the individual tourist’s perception and experience (which involve deviant components). From
this perspective, use of the term ‘‘dark’’ here centres on the perverse and the socially
condemned. Conversely, most previous literature on dark tourism has predominantly
comprised accounts of either the supply or demand perspective of sites of death or tragedy,
largely ignoring the incidental tourist experience and potential deviant components (Biran and
Poria, 2012; Biran et al., 2011; Hepburn, 2012; Stone and Sharpley, 2008).
Therefore, this paper assumes a more nuanced and experiential approach to understanding
(and reconceptualising) dark tourism; one which gives attention to the tourist’s lived and
subjective experience, rather than focusing on death/atrocity per se as integral to early
de?nitions of dark tourism which renders death a mere commodity for consumption. Indeed,
this case study research reveals that not all tourism is free from shades of darkness
(Hepburn, 2012). In addition, from a supply perspective, travel to Iran, a country portrayed
as being dangerous, with socio-political con?ict, and for which most governments issue
travel restrictions, can also be considered a place that is ‘‘dark’’ within existing de?nitions
(Biran and Poria, 2012; Bowman and Pezzullo, 2010).
In short, the case study presented in this paper can be considered ‘‘dark tourism’’ because,
?rstly, places of socio-political danger are noted as ‘‘dark’’ places where tourists gaze upon
‘‘dark’’ aspects that are (socially constructed as) forbidden or hostile to international tourists.
Secondly, from an experiential perspective, the lived incidental nature of the tourist’s
experience in that place can also be ‘‘dark’’ (an experience of ‘‘darkness’’) through the
negative consumption and performance of danger, deviance, voyeurism or fear, as
described here in the context of Andrew’s imprisonment. As such, drawing on the
expression of Hepburn (2012), this paper not only reveals tourism in darkness as well as
tourism about darkness, it also reveals tourism as darkness.
Interviewing Andrew Barber online
To understand Andrew Barber’s lived experience of his travel in Iran, a qualitative approach
was deemed most appropriate. Indeed, qualitative methodologies have gained momentum
in tourismstudies, especially with respect to capturing the embodied and experiential nature
of tourism (Ateljevic et al., 2007; Chambers, 2007; Jamal and Hollinshead, 2001; Phillimore
and Goodson, 2004). To capture Andrew’s lived experience, an online interview method was
necessary. The respondent had just arrived in England from Iran when we started our
interviews, replying to our post on the Thorn Tree Travel online forum of the Lonely Planet
network. The use and study of computer-mediated communications (CMC) spans almost
every academic discipline and methodological approach, contends Markham (2004).
Indeed, in the wider social sciences, more precisely in sociology, anthropology and human
geography, amongst others, online methods have been increasingly used, for example
‘‘netnography’’ (Denzin, 2004; Hine, 2005; Johns et al., 2004; Kozinets, 2010; Mann and
Stewart, 2000; Wittel, 2000). Hall (2011) points out that there is a considerable body of
literature on e-tourism, but only an inconsiderable amount is qualitative.
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Online interviews for this study were conducted with Andrew Barber on 21 August 2010, 22
August 2010, 27 May 2011, and the last one on 2 December 2011. The interviews lasted on
average two to four hours. All of them were conducted on Skype in a written form and did not
involve audio or video formats. A number of electronic mails were also exchanged using
Yahoo! Mail during these interview times. However, Hine (2005) argues that ‘‘social research
methods have always had to be adaptive’’ (p. 2), and more so when used in the online world.
Notably, we had to adapt to the feed of the online connection. It was not a conscious decision
to interview Andrew using text Skype rather than audio and/or video conferencing, simply
that the online connection on both sides did not support an uninterrupted video and audio
chat. After the initial online contact via electronic mail in which Andrew agreed to online
interviewing, he was electronically mailed an information sheet and consent form. The of?ine
ethical regulations were adapted to the online setting and we ensured that the interviewee
made an informed decision to participate in the research.
The advantage of the instant messaging interviews with Andrew was the real-time nature of
the exchange, which has much in common with the traditional face-to-face on-site interview.
It is also an advantage from an ethical perspective in the sense that participants ‘‘have the
opportunity to protect themselves from making injudicious comments’’ (Bampton and
Cowton, 2002, para. 8). Further, participants are free to choose to answer at their own
convenience. Researchers, too, ?nd it a convenient tool for it does away with being present
in person, being self-conscious of how one behaves and speaks, and it eliminates the
fretting over a certain sentence that was said or a gesture that was done in a face-to-face,
in-person interview (Bampton and Cowton, 2002). Andrew also reportedly found the
interviews useful, as they ‘‘help to keep the mind off the past few months’’ (personal
communication, 21 August 2010).
One disadvantage of the online interviewing technique is the lack of social and bodily cues.
This disadvantage of the disembodiment of the online, synchronous interview makes a
noticeable difference. Even with the option of using more and more developed and
expressive emoticons present in all forms of instant messaging, online synchronous
interviews remain largely disembodied. Emoticons are used to replace ‘‘the absence of
social cues’’ (Opdenakker, 2006, p. 6) to show emotions, to establish the tone of the chat, it
sometimes includes ‘‘verbal descriptions of feelings and sounds’’, for laughter, for example,
‘‘hehehe’’ can be used (Mann and Stewart, 2000, p. 15). Indeed, emoticons helped shape
the affective tone of the interview.
The interviews were based on questions regarding Andrew’s motivation to travel to Iran, his
views on whether he considered the country ‘‘dangerous’’ for international tourists and the
lived experiences of his travel. Our online discussions were aimed at unravelling some of his
deepest thoughts and feelings experienced during this ‘‘dark’’ trip, so as to understand
‘‘what is so dark about dark tourism?’’. The data were analysed through the prism of
psychoanalysis, more speci?cally voyeuristic theories postulated by Freud (1938, 1984) and
Lacan (1977a, b). The key themes of dark tourism motivations, actively but perhaps
unconsciously seeking ‘‘darkness’’ and the thrill of danger, as well as emotional
performances, emerged from the data. Throughout this paper we support our arguments
with lengthy excerpts from the interviews. This was meant to make the process more
transparent and to avoid the charge sometimes levelled at qualitative researchers that
they/we simply select a ‘‘few unrepresentative quotes to support their initial prejudices
(sometimes referred to disparagingly as ‘cherry picking’)’’ (Jackson, 2001, p. 202).
We openly acknowledge the use of a single case study in this research. The study of the
(subjective) leisure experience has similarly been presented through the use of a single case
(see, for example, McCormick, 1996). The bene?ts of presenting a single case include being
able to provide a richness and depth from which to view the case’s world; such that the
reader’s awareness and understanding may be expanded (McCormick, 1996). A single
case provides a unique, intimate and emic understanding of the phenomenon being
studied. Whilst we recognise the limitations of the case study approach taken here, and as
such, generalisations cannot be inferred from the ?ndings, we argue that there is merit in
critically exploring the motivations and emotional experiences of tourist(s) travelling to
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places that may be considered forbidden, dangerous or hostile in an attempt to further
understand the concept of dark tourism from an experiential perspective. To this end, we
present Andrew’s dark tourism story below using quotes from his online interviews.
Andrew Barber – a ‘‘dark’’ tourist pro?le
I am in short a professional traveler. I have been on the road for about 17 years, and work along
the way. I’ve been to about 70 countries and I wanted to go someplace I’d not yet been. Iran is
known for its amazing hospitality, history, culture, and I wanted to see it. [. . .] regarding political
hot spots, I generally don’t listen nor believe or agree with the news and how it’s reported. I’ve
spent months in places like Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Colombia, and honestly they are some of the most
amazing countries to visit and the people always friendly.
This is how Andrew de?nes himself, a professional traveler who was in no apparent way
affected by news media imagery about Iran, but he was nevertheless familiar enough with
them not to believe them. The desire to experience countries like Iran, for Andrew, can
perhaps be linked to the quest for ‘‘other’’ places of danger, con?ict and ‘‘darkness’’.
Andrewexplains his motivations of travelling to dangerous areas: ‘‘think of all you hear about
so many places, it’s never true. We’d never leave the house if one believed all one hears’’. To
facilitate this quest, he travels for three to six months every year and works the rest of the
year, or ‘‘whatever it takes to keep me going’’. With such a lifestyle, Andrew contends that ‘‘I
don’t have a home as such. The more you dive and hear stories, the more you want to visit’’.
Iran is a country where acts of crime, terror and socio-political con?icts have occurred
especially since the country’s contested presidential election on 12 June 2009. In such a
place, as a tourist, Andrew, was outwardly enticed by ‘‘Iran’s amazing hospitality’’, thus he
stepped back from the negative media imagery, an aspect that seems to de?ne Andrew
Barber’s tourist pro?le since he also travelled to and worked in another sensitive country in
the region, namely Iraq during the 2003 war. Thus, before travelling to Iran in 2010 Andrew
worked in Iraq for the delivery company DHL. Re?ecting on his travel and work experiences
in Iraq, he recounts:
If you wanted out [of Iraq during the war], you could get out, but I was having a great time and
every month I worked was another year of travel. I felt very safe. The beginning of the war was
cowboy country and there were no rules, so if you knew how to survive, it was a GREAT deal of
fun. [. . .] I admit that the ?rst missile that came in was strange, but by the time I left, I’d had over
400 attacks in the places I was living. I had a few close calls for sure.
To a certain extent his experiences in Iraq represented his ‘‘demise’’ in Iran, as the
photographs taken in Iraq were stored on his laptop and this led Iranian investigators to
believe the English tourist had been involved in espionage. The desire to experience places
of danger such as Iraq and Iran can be explained using Lacan’s scopic drive or the drive to
gaze whereby ‘‘the subject [is] lost and suddenly refound in the con?agration of shame, by
the introduction of the other’’ (Lacan, 1977b, p. 182). Lacan goes on to argue that what the
person is really looking for and what he/she ?nds ‘‘is merely a shadow, a shadow behind the
curtain, [and] there he will phantasize any magic of presence’’ (Lacan, 1977b, p. 182). For
Lacan, phantasy is akin to a frozen scene from a jammed reel in a ?lm projector before a
traumatic event happens (Kingsbury and Brunn, 2004). Freud considers phantasies as
substitutes for what cannot be achieved in reality (Frosh, 2003). The distinction between
reality and phantasy is a problematic one and will always break down, the reason being the
activity and dynamism of the unconscious, which Freud maintains pervades all of our
thinking. Thus, the boundary between the reality of the ‘‘?rst missile and over 400 attacks’’ on
the one hand, and Andrew feeling ‘‘very safe’’ on the other hand, seems to blur within the
dynamic activity of his unconscious.
The ‘‘magic’’ or the ‘‘great deal of fun’’, to use Andrew’s words of his experiences in Iraq
during the Second Gulf War, represents what and how the tourist performs as a
consequence of the gaze which is ‘‘fundamentally oriented towards a lack’’ (Grosz, 1992,
p. 449). In this respect the gaze is different from a perception, it is not internal, it is situated
on the outside ‘‘like desire itself, the gaze emanates fromthe ?eld of the Other’’ (Grosz, 1992,
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p. 449). Places of con?ict, torn by the war such as Iraq during 2003 to 2005, or portrayed as
dangerous like Iran, represent in this case the ‘‘other’’ that brings about a gaze outside to the
subject, a voyeuristic gaze. The active drive to look at – scopophilia – and take pictures of
buildings – voyeurism – in war-torn Iraq and of landscapes with pylons near a power plant in
Iran can be active and masculine Freud (1984) argues. This is reciprocated by its passive
and therefore feminine form, according to Freud (1984), of the exhibitionism displayed by
such places. These dark places of danger and con?ict are ‘‘subjecti?ed’’ to exhibit an
attraction to be gazed upon. As mentioned in the introduction of this paper, scopophilic
impulses are directly linked to the desire for mastery and the desire to know (epistemophilia)
(Grosz, 1992). Andrew’s ‘‘being on the road for 17 years and having lived in over 70
countries’’ can potentially, therefore, be explained through the concept of epistemophilia –
the desire to know the world.
The ‘‘dark’’ experiential nature of imprisonment
While Andrew feels his time visiting Iraq was ‘‘a great deal of fun’’, he is more sarcastic of his
experience in the Iranian jail. Andrew ‘‘humorously’’ recounts his experience of being
arrested and ‘‘?own to Tehran, compliments of the police. 58 days in Evin prison and
released on the 17th [of August 2010]. Basically 21 days travel and then prison’’. His
recollections of his arrest are vivid:
I was hitching in the back of a car [. . .] and they [police] pulled us over, put me in their vehicle and
then took us all to the police station. I’m not sure exactly but the people [local Iranians] who gave
me a lift are in a lot of trouble and still may be in trouble. All of it was in Farsi but when at the police
[station] a soldier who spoke English translated for me, no shouting, only talking. [. . .] over the
next 12 hours [I was interviewed] by about 8 different investigators. Gradually the chain of
command brought in more and more important investigators. [. . .] I was not worried at all because
I had done nothing. [. . .] About 8 hours into the whole thing, I started to worry a bit and asked if
perhaps I should contact my embassy. It’s a ?ne line between pushing them and getting released
and I didn’t want to cause problems too much because I still had no worries [. . .] the next day I
had to appear before a judge and he said I was a spy. After this, I requested my embassy for sure.
Still, and it surprise me a bit, I have always remained calm throughout the entire deal, never really
losing it emotionally. When I was being ?own/transferred to Tehran, I was told I was being taken to
my embassy and we’d all discuss things so that was not a problem [. . .] just a lie! No real
information about staying longer, again, just more and more people coming in, and bigger and
bigger ?sh who wanted to talk to me. [. . .] They inform you basically of nothing. That’s the whole
scheme to the whole thing. In prison as well, absolutely no information whatsoever [. . .] It’s a form
of what is called white torture rather than physical torture.
A case of an imprisoned tourist debated in the literature, more speci?cally in the ?eld of
geography, is that of Ghazi Falah. A tourist, a political geographer of Palestinian descent, a
tenured professor at a university in Canada, a dual citizen of Israel and Canada, Ghazi Falah
was arrested in July 2006 near the Lebanese border by the Israel Security Agency (Gravois,
2007). ‘‘Earlier that day, he had visited a popular tourist site where the border meets the
coast, taking a mix of sightseer’s snapshots and other photographs, framed with a
geographer’s eye, of the topography’’ described Gravois (2007, p. 1) of Falah’s case. Falah
describes his detention as ‘‘28 days in hell’’ (Falah, 2007, p. 587). AndrewBarber in The Sun
Magazine equally presents the Iranian jail as ‘‘a hellish place’’ (O’Shea, 2010). ‘‘Hell’’ seems
to be the common denominator in these two cases, ‘‘the descriptor ‘hell’ for such a space is a
true signi?er for these jails, [which are] invisible sites around the globe where academics
and others are detained and degraded. The lived reality is shattering’’ (Falah, 2007, p. 587).
We, the two authors of this paper, have not lived that reality and in this paper we do not seek
to ponti?cate on that, but rather to examine, through the prisms of tourism and voyeurism,
motivations and behaviour that led to ‘‘a lived reality in the prison’’ while touring in a place of
danger and con?ict.
Tourists have traditionally been regarded as yearning to spend holidays in peaceful and
tranquil destinations where physical safety and the security of their belongings are
guaranteed. Interestingly enough most historical evidence shows that travel for the purpose
of pleasure, trade, religion or military service has been associated with risk-taking and fear
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for loss of physical integrity (Holden, 2005). Travelling to Iran, a country on most travel
warning lists, Andrew embodies the example of travel and tourism associated with
risk-taking as well as fear. Indeed, the experience that Andrew relayed of his imprisonment
was emotional:
I was a little worried on the plane [to Tehran in the company of Iranian police]. I remember looking
at the big white ?uffy clouds and decided I’d look at themfor some time as it might be the last time
I’d get to enjoy the feeling. Very nice clouds. [. . .] all you must do is deal with what your mind
thinks and I turned mine off very quickly. [. . .] If I die tomorrow, I’ve lived and I feel good about that
[. . .] I only want to die quickly if it happens. Perhaps my luck is lessening, so I may adapt my
lifestyle as such but probably not, as I know myself. [. . .] The only fear was how long it would take
to get out. I was never really afraid though. I took it one day at a time and put goals or timelines on
myself. Again though, this Iranian guy assured me that all foreigners are released. My biggest
fear by far was that at some time, I’d lose my mind [. . .] I tried not to ask myself ‘‘why, or I wonder
if’’ because it just made no sense.
As is argued elsewhere (see Buda and McIntosh, 2012), emotions matter and de?ne tourist
engagements in and with places of danger and con?ict. In the above excerpt, re?ecting on
his emotional state at the beginning of the whole ordeal, Andrew’s emotions gradually
increase frombeing ‘‘a little worried on the plane’’ to contemplating his biggest fear of losing
his mind. His crescendo account re?ects mixed feelings and struggles to stay calm. His
worry was balanced by the ‘‘big, white ?uffy clouds [. . .] very nice clouds’’ at which he could
gaze from the plane ?ying him to the prison; enjoying that feeling was counteracted by the
thought of possibly being dead the following day. The absence of such con?icting emotions
may have been more problematic than recognising his confused, fearful and worried state.
Andrew admitted to having felt fear, which gradually increased as he was never given
information on what was to follow:
Mostly fear of the unknown. How are friends and family reacting? Do they even know I’m gone?
They were actually much later in responding than I expected, about 2-3 weeks in fact. The
biggest thing that set them off that something was wrong was I did not respond in any form to my
sister’s triathlon ironman race which I always do as I used to do them as well [. . .]. I had some
fears of getting sick [. . .] in general though, you try to clear your mind of absolutely everything and
just get through the days. I don’t know that it was ever exciting. Very monotonous more than
anything. I was very happy that I have the ability to do nothing [. . .] Some people need to do
something all day, and I do not. So doing nothing all day was quite easily [. . .] I quickly tried to
occupy my time and made decks of cards to play solitaire, made dice from sugar cubes and
played myself in backgammon, drew pictures, tracked movement, listed past countries visited
etc. [. . .] anything to take my mind off what most people think one should think about like family.
Fear of the unknown pushed Andrewto create a world of his own in his mind in which he took
refuge. Thus, he played solitaire, backgammon, tracked his life that far. He explains how he
engaged his body in push ups, sit-ups to, perhaps, release the tension and fear of his dark
thoughts described below:
A lot during the ?rst few days. I looked in the cell for how I could do it etc. It’s a very common
thought, very hard to do but the thoughts were there. I also wrote another will whilst inside, but it
was taken from me and destroyed as I’d found a pen in my cell and was not allowed to have one
[. . .] Just ?gured that suicide was a natural progression in the thought process and maybe
instead, went on to thoughts about how to keep myself as healthy as possible. Push-ups, sit-ups,
eating everything. [. . .] On day eight, I lost the plot, the only time I really lost control of myself but
quickly got over it and put a 180-day mark on my makeshift calendar and decided that I could
make 180 days if necessary, especially since I’d already done 1/3 of it [. . .] Other emotions [. . .] I
had a few female friends who I really thought of a lot, and got closer to God. I was never religious
but decided that any prayers could only hope, if only for my sanity.
Emotions in general, and fear in particular are important in examining experiences of
voyeurism in dark tourism. In psychoanalysis, voyeurism refers to any sexual satisfaction
obtained fromvision, it usually is associated with a keyhole aspect and a ‘‘fearful’’ violation of
space, like Freud’s example of the Peeping Tom looking through the shutters at Lady Godiva
(Sarup, 1992). As mentioned in the introduction to this paper, we examine the object of
darkness rather than the object of sexual fantasy in relation to the interconnections between
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dark tourism and vouyeurism. Considered broadly, psychoanalytic theories of voyeurism
could be applied to the desire to gaze upon something that is (socially constructed) as
forbidden and may therefore bring about fear, like a place that represents the violence and
danger of an ongoing con?ict such as a border, a checkpoint or even a town located at the
heart of the con?ict. The desire to look upon something that is forbidden is counteracted by a
repulsion of the object of desire. In this respect Freud (1984) explains ‘‘repulsion operates
from the direction of the conscious upon what is to be repressed [. . .] attraction is exercised
by what was primarily repressed upon everything with which it can establish a connection’’
(p. 148). The initial desire that Andrew felt to visit Iran for its incredible hospitality seem to
have turned into repulsion manifested through suicidal thoughts which he tried to regard as
‘‘natural’’, if only to maintain his sanity.
Conclusion
Moving beyond a mere simplistic understanding of the phenomenon, this paper has
examined the experiential nature of dark tourism, and seeks to offer a more holistic and
nuanced perspective in this regard. Previous descriptive conceptualisations render dark
tourism a commodi?ed product and dark tourists a homogenous group and passive
receptors (Lisle, 2007; Wight and Lennon, 2007). An approach which emphasises the
subjective over the objective (without creating an opposing binary subjective/objective) and
lived incidental descriptions of the individual’s (deviant) experiences of tourism renders
different motives for, and experiences of, ‘‘darkness’’. In particular, the motives for travel and
experiences examined in this paper reveal a qualitatively different approach and more
re?exive narrative from those of previous dark tourism studies which mainly reveal the
experiences about remembrance, spirituality, mourning, educational, personal meaning,
and so on (Biran et al., 2011). Rather, in our qualitative analysis of the dark tourist, Andrew
Barber, we reveal that tourism can also be experienced as ‘‘dark’’ through negative deviant
behaviour and the consumption of fear and danger. Such lived experiences can tell us a
great deal about the potentially transgressive (and even transformative) relationship
between tourism, danger and con?ict in a globalised world. Lisle (2000, 2007) argues that
previous tourism studies have tended to perpetuate a notion of tourism merely equated with
peace, security and prosperity in ‘‘safe’’ places where danger and military activity are
absent.
Arguably, ‘‘because tourists and terrorists rely on the same communication, transportation,
and support infrastructure and because terrorists have targeted tourist destinations and
transport systems, the threat of death exists, however minimally, in virtually every popular
tourist destination’’ (Bowman and Pezzullo, 2010, p. 191). It is no longer possible to
guarantee the continuation of post/modern tourismin places unimpeded by the disruption of
war, con?ict or terrorism. Indeed, some tourists now search for dangerous places or
‘‘war-zone hopping’’, thus drawing closer parallels between the mobility experiences of
tourists and soldiers (Lisle, 2000, p. 11). The claim, therefore, that dark tourism is primarily
driven by the search for danger, or the desire to be commemorative about past ‘‘dark’’
events, rather than voyeuristic in terms of gazing at sites of violence, death or con?ict
ignores the serendipity and deviance of lived tourismexperiences and further conforms dark
tourism to the parameters of the tourist gaze (Lisle, 2007). The tourist gaze does not
guarantee safety.
Thus, we share the desire of other scholars (for example, Biran and Poria, 2012; Bowman
and Pezzullo, 2010; Hepburn, 2012; Osbaldiston and Petray, 2011; Sharpley, 2005; Stone,
2011) to re-conceptualise dark tourism in a way that hints at the complexities that surround
dark situations as lived, rather than merely as an identi?able ‘‘attraction’’. The concept of
‘‘voyeurism’’ is one lens, we argue, through which this may be attempted by applying it to
understand the motives and (incidental) experiences of tourists visiting sites of con?ict or
danger. Our study on vouyeuristic interpretations of dark tourism experiences may be
considered brief and cursory, as are most initial attempts to inject new dimensions to an
increasingly maturing sub-?eld like dark tourism. However, Lisle (2007) explains that
voyeurism is one way we might achieve a fundamental shift in the way we understand, for
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example, tourists in sites of con?ict and the relationship between danger and tourism, and
consequently the re?exive ‘‘dark’’ recounts of tourists’ experiences. Other lenses may
include theories of violence, war, social injustice, the sacred, horror, mortality, amongst
others, that help recognise the fragility of life in general, individual mortality or question the
human ability to act inhumanely (Bowman and Pezzullo, 2010). In so doing, we drive the
challenge to really ask ‘‘What is so ‘dark’ about tourism in general rather than just salient to
dark tourism?’’ - both within and outside of destinations to which travel may be considered
‘‘dangerous’’.
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Corresponding author
Dorina Maria Buda can contacted at: [email protected]
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This article has been cited by:
1. G.J. Ashworth, Rami K. Isaac. 2015. Have we illuminated the dark? Shifting perspectives on ‘dark’ tourism. Tourism
Recreation Research 40, 316-325. [CrossRef]
2. Dorina Maria Buda, David Shim. 2015. ‘Real’ and ‘normal’ North Korea: on the politics of shining light on the darkness. Reply
to: ‘Shining light on the darkness. Placing tourists within North Korean tourism’. Current Issues in Tourism 1-3. [CrossRef]
3. Dorina Maria Buda, David Shim. 2015. Desiring the dark: ‘a taste for the unusual’ in North Korean tourism?. Current Issues
in Tourism 18, 1-6. [CrossRef]
4. Dorina Maria Buda. 2015. The death drive in tourism studies. Annals of Tourism Research 50, 39-51. [CrossRef]
5. Dorina Maria Buda, Anne-Marie d’Hauteserre, Lynda Johnston. 2014. Feeling and tourism studies. Annals of Tourism Research
46, 102-114. [CrossRef]
6. Avital Biran, Kenneth F. Hyde. 2013. New perspectives on dark tourism. International Journal of Culture, Tourism and
Hospitality Research 7:3, 191-198. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
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doc_613499771.pdf
The purpose of this paper is to propose voyeurism as one possible lens to analyse the
experiential nature of dark tourism in places of socio-political danger, thus expanding psychoanalytic
understandings of those who travel to a ‘‘dark’’ place.
International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research
Dark tourism and voyeurism: tourist arrested for “spying” in Iran
Dorina Maria Buda Alison J ane McIntosh
Article information:
To cite this document:
Dorina Maria Buda Alison J ane McIntosh, (2013),"Dark tourism and voyeurism: tourist arrested for “spying” in Iran", International J ournal of
Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research, Vol. 7 Iss 3 pp. 214 - 226
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Dark tourism and voyeurism: tourist
arrested for ‘‘spying’’ in Iran
Dorina Maria Buda and Alison Jane McIntosh
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose voyeurism as one possible lens to analyse the
experiential nature of dark tourism in places of socio-political danger, thus expanding psychoanalytic
understandings of those who travel to a ‘‘dark’’ place.
Design/methodology/approach – Freud’s and Lacan’s theories on voyeurism are used to examine the
desire to travel to and gaze upon something that is (socially constructed as) forbidden, such as a place
that is portrayed as being hostile to international tourists. A qualitative and critical analysis approach is
employed to examine one tourist’s experience of travelling to Iran and being imprisoned as a result of
taking a photograph of what he thought was a sunrise but also pictured pylons near an electrical plant.
Findings – The authors’ analysis of the experiences of this tourist in Iran reveals that tourism, in its
widest sense, can be experienced as ‘‘dark’’ through the consumption and performance of danger. This
?nding moves beyond the examination of dark tourism merely as ‘‘tourist products’’, or that frame a
particular moment in time, or are merely founded on one’s connection to or perception of the site.
Research limitations/implications – Whilst the authors recognise the limitations of the case study
approach taken here, and as such, generalisations cannot be inferred fromthe ?ndings, it is argued that
there is merit in exploring critically the motivational and experiential nature of travel to places that may be
considered forbidden, dangerous or hostile in an attempt to further understand the concept of dark
tourism from a tourist’s lived perspective.
Originality/value – As the authors bring voyeurism into the debate on dark tourism, the study analyses
the voyeuristic experiences of a dark tourist. In short, the authors argue that the lived and ‘‘deviant’’
experiential nature of tourism itself can be included in the discussion of ‘‘dark tourism’’.
Keywords Tourism, Experience, Dark tourism/tourist, Emotions, Online interviewing, Psychoanalysis,
Voyeurism
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
A British tourist was locked up for 58 days in a hellish Iranian jail – for taking [a] photo. Andrew
Barber, 43, was accused of spying because the snap – meant to be of a sunrise – showed pylons
near a power plant. Cops then searched his laptop and found photos Andrew had taken of
buildings in Iraq where he had worked for delivery ?rm DHL. They thought he had taken them in
Iran, and accused him of espionage. A judge then threw him into Tehran’s notorious Evin prison,
which houses political detainees – some awaiting execution (O’Shea, 2010, para. 1-3).
Andrew Barber travelled to Iran in June 2010; three weeks into his trip he was arrested by
Iranian military. He was kept in a prison for approximately two months under allegations of
espionage. In this paper we examine a tourist’s ‘‘dark’’ experience in Iran, a country for
which most governments issue travel restrictions. This dark experience is investigated
through the lens of the psychoanalytic concept of voyeurism and draw on excerpts from a
series of online interviews with the tourist. We frame our analysis of Andrew’s story within the
sub-?eld of dark tourism. His case was presented in the August 2010 edition of the Sun
Magazine, from which we quote the above excerpt. It is maintained in that article, and
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VOL. 7 NO. 3 2013, pp. 214-226, Q Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1750-6182 DOI 10.1108/IJCTHR-07-2012-0059
Dorina Maria Buda is a
Senior Lecturer at the
Hospitality Business
School, Saxion University of
Applied Sciences,
Deventer, The Netherlands.
Alison Jane McIntosh is a
Professor in the Tourism
and Hospitality
Management Department,
University of Waikato
University, Hamilton, New
Zealand.
The authors wish to express
their gratitude to Andrew
Barber for sharing his story with
them.
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con?rmed by Andrew in our interviews, that the main reason for his imprisonment was taking
a photograph of a sunrise, which also showed pylons near an Iranian power plant.
Voyeurism, understood as the drive to look at something forbidden, led to the tourist being
imprisoned and charged with espionage. In psychoanalysis, voyeurism is understood
together with its counterpart – exhibitionism – as being the active and passive aspects of
the drive to look or scopophilia (Freud, 1938, 1984; Lacan, 1977a, b). Voyeuristic behaviour
explains a drive connected to the desire for mastery and desire to know. In this paper, we
use Freud’s and Lacan’s theories on voyeurism to examine the desire to travel to and gaze
upon something that is (socially constructed as) forbidden, like a place that is portrayed as
being hostile to international tourists. However, while this paper employs voyeurism theory
(especially in terms of forbidden drive and desire), it examines the object of darkness rather
than the object of sexual fantasy as prioritised in previous studies (Lisle, 2004).
As we bring psychoanalysis into the debate on dark tourism, our main aim in this paper is to
expand voyeuristic and/or experiential understandings of those who travel to a ‘‘dark’’ place.
Speci?cally, recounting the experiences of one tourist, we contribute to emerging accounts
in tourism studies that present personalised versions of situated and contextualised
research (Buda and McIntosh, 2012; Morgan and Pritchard, 2005; Tucker, 2009). We also
respond to the call for a reconceptualisation of dark tourism based on empirical evidence of
tourists’ visits to sites of death/violence in which the tourist is involved in ‘‘negative’’,
‘‘deviant’’ behaviour (Biran and Poria, 2012). Psychoanalysis in general and voyeurism in
particular have seldom been used by tourism researchers. Conversely, other ?elds of study,
for example geography (see Bondi, 1999; Callard, 2003; Kingsbury, 2003, 2004, 2009a, b;
Pile, 1996; Sibley, 2003) have drawn more con?dently on psychoanalytic theories of Freud,
Lacan, Winnicott, Kristeva and Irigaray to the extent that ‘‘n the last decade, social and
cultural geography has experienced a ‘psychoanalytic turn’’’ (Callard, 2003, p. 295). Such
authors have not only employed psychoanalytic theories to examine ‘‘imperfect’’ and
‘‘deviant’’ others, but also argue that psychoanalysis is useful in addressing socio-political
injustices. In this respect, Sibley (2003) maintains that ‘‘psychoanalysis lends itself to politics
and that prominent practitioners have not been averse to applying theory to political
critique’’ (p. 396). In tourism studies we seek to open for discussion Freud’s and Lacan’s
theories on voyeurism as useful tools to understand some tourists’ performances in dark
places. In doing so we launch a call for tourism researchers to engage critically and more
hopefully with the ?eld of psychoanalysis.
Dark tourism and voyeurism
The sub-?eld of dark tourism has received considerable attention over the last few years
(Dann, 1998; Dann and Seaton, 2001; Lennon and Foley, 2000; Lisle, 2007; Seaton, 1996,
1999, 2009; Seaton and Lennon, 2004; Sharpley, 2005, 2009; Sharpley and Stone, 2006, 2009,
2011; Stone and Sharpley, 2008; Strange and Kempa, 2003). Seaton (2009) argues that, two
decades ago, tourism practices associated with death, disaster and atrocity resided in a big
lacuna. Nowadays it has caught the attention of both the academic world and that of the wider
public. There is an eclectic and disparate range of terminology that shows researchers’
growing interest in death-related tourism, such as ‘‘thanatourism’’ (Dunkley, 2007; Seaton,
1996), ‘‘macabre form of special interest tourism’’ (Warner, 1999) ‘‘dark tourism’’ (Lennon and
Foley, 2000), ‘‘morbid tourism’’ (Blom, 2000), ‘‘grief tourism’’ (Sharpley, 2005), ‘‘battle?eld
tourism’’ (Dunkley et al., 2011), and ‘‘war tourism’’ (Smith, 1998).
Thanatourism is de?ned by Seaton (1996) as being ‘‘travel to a location wholly, or partially,
motivated by the desire for actual or symbolic encounters with death’’ (p. 240). Lennon and
Foley (2000) use the term ‘‘dark tourism’’ and limit the boundaries of the concept to events
that happened in the twentieth century and that pose questions to the project of modernity.
Sharpley (2005) proposes a matrix with shades of grey tourism ranking from pale to black
depending on supply and demand. Other authors have employed these de?nitions to
examine the phenomena under analysis in their respective case studies (Preece and Price,
2005; Smith and Croy, 2005; Warner, 1999).
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The generic phrase ‘‘dark tourism’’ has gained broader acceptance in the literature than, for
instance, the more technical term ‘‘thanatourism’’ (Smith and Croy, 2005). The relative
simplicity of the term‘‘dark tourism’’ is in contrast with the multiplicity of aspects that de?ne this
concept and the potential deviant components of the tourism experience. Seaton (1999)
contends that the difference lies not on a linguistic level, as the debate is not over which word
best relays the meaning of the same concept. Thanatourism and dark tourism are two related
concepts but different in their employment of the temporal aspect. Dark tourismhas been said
to refer to fascination with death, disaster and atrocity as an explicit motivation to travel,
together with aspects of memoralisation, commodi?cation and industrialisation being an
intimation of postmodernity. For thanatourism, pilgrimage represents the earliest form of travel
associated with death and hostility. Interest in disaster and death as part of the travelling
experience is not a phenomenon of the post/modern but of the pre-modern world, since
people have long travelled to battle?elds, cemeteries, mausoleums, or death/murder sites.
Thanatopsis, contemplation of death, has always been present in human life, more so from
the Middle Ages to the mid-nineteenth century, when it was well supported by symbolic
representations and material objects meant to keep thoughts on death live in people’s
awareness. The concept of thanatopsis also refers to the factors that generate these
thoughts and the response to these stimuli; thus, it is an overarching concept that includes
thoughts on one’s own death as well as death of others, irrespective of the distance in time
and space. ‘‘Dark tourism is a travel dimension of thanatopsis’’, which Seaton (1996, p. 240)
calls thanatourism. Drawing on De Quincey’s article ‘‘On murder considered as one of the
?ne arts’’ (cited in Seaton, 1996), the author further presents that interest in death is a taste
shared by most humans to a greater or lesser extent. The premise underlying both De
Quincey’s article and tourismrelated to death, disaster and hostility, Seaton (1996) argues, is
the ‘‘act or event which might be deplorable or repugnant from a moral point of view could
have considerable attraction as a spectator experience’’ (p. 234). Debates about the ‘‘dark’’
nature of, or motives for, tourism thus abound.
The advanced technological devices and methods that have contributed to the collapse of
time and space have helped spread this phenomenon, bringing death, disaster and atrocity
live into people’s homes and in their living memory. Media, movies, and breaking news,
amongst others, help stimulate dark tourism, and the global-local juxtaposition represents a
drive to this phenomenon. Therefore, ‘‘dark tourists’’ cannot be totally divorced from the
viewing public, who incorporats these media commoditisations into their lives and later seek
tourist experiences to feed the sense of ‘‘familiarity’’ provided by the media. Of particular
relevance to this paper, the intensi?cation of globalisation and circulation of con?ict-zone
images within the news media have made almost ‘‘every part of the world instantly
recognizable, accessible and understandable’’ (Lisle, 2007, p. 334). This is especially so with
‘‘hostile’’ and ‘‘unwelcome’’ places of war and con?ict, as people have been bombarded ever
since the war in Vietnam with constant ‘‘war-zone’’ news. This familiarity has brought about
increased interest in tourism to regions promoted in breaking news reports. Such interests
have, in turn, been pejoratively labelled as ‘‘deviant’’ and ‘‘voyeuristic’’. Indeed, Lisle (2007), in
her chapter on ‘‘Defending voyeurism: dark tourism and the problem of global security’’,
argues that this supposedly deviant and voyeuristic behaviour represents what is ‘‘most
provocative and challenging about Dark Tourism’’ (p. 336).
To evaluate this voyeuristic behaviour, a limited number of previous scholars have drawn on
psychoanalysis in their tourism research (Kingsbury and Brunn, 2003, 2004; Lisle, 2004,
2007; Uriely et al., 2011). Kingsbury and Brunn (2003, 2004), for example, use Freud’s and
Lacan’s psychoanalytic concepts of ‘‘symptom’’, ‘‘ego’’, ‘‘defense’’ and ‘‘fantasy’’ to analyse
12 travel magazines from the USA in the ?ve months following the events of 11 September
2001. These approaches enable authors to theorise ‘‘the uncanny disjunctures between the
exotic, vulnerable, terrorized, and sunny tourist worlds that traversed the pages of the
post-September 11 travel magazines’’ (Kingsbury and Brunn, 2003, p. 40). Examining a
phenomenon related to the same 11 September incident, Lisle (2004) discusses the viewing
platform at Ground Zero in New York as a site of voyeurism and spectacle. The author
analyses ‘‘discourses of voyeurism and authenticity through the work of Baudrillard, Debord
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and Bauman in an effort to position the tourist as a signi?cant political subject’’ (Lisle, 2004,
p. 3). Uriely et al. (2011) also use psychoanalytic theories in a tourism context. The authors
explore deviant tourist behaviour using the concepts of Id instincts of sex, aggression and
Superego conceptualised by Freudian psychoanalysis.
The present paper seeks to continue the approach adopted in these studies and, in so doing,
draws on the concept of voyeurism to examine one tourist’s motivation to travel to Iran and the
‘‘negative deviance’’ of his lived experience there. In this way, the embodied, emotional,
experiential and often unexpected nature of the tourist encounter becomes important in
(re)conceptualising dark tourism. Indeed, this case study research attends to the relationships
between the tourist and the site attributes; more speci?cally, that the nature of the tourist
experience is one of ‘‘negative deviance’’ and ‘‘negative’’ social consequences for the tourist.
As such, the case study research presented here provides empirical evidence of dark tourism
as de?ned by Biran and Poria (2012); namely, that dark tourism relates ‘‘to visits to sites of
death and violence in which the visitors are involved in negative deviant behaviours’’ (p. 70).
Thus, dark tourismis viewed in a social context (rather than about death per se) and in line with
the individual tourist’s perception and experience (which involve deviant components). From
this perspective, use of the term ‘‘dark’’ here centres on the perverse and the socially
condemned. Conversely, most previous literature on dark tourism has predominantly
comprised accounts of either the supply or demand perspective of sites of death or tragedy,
largely ignoring the incidental tourist experience and potential deviant components (Biran and
Poria, 2012; Biran et al., 2011; Hepburn, 2012; Stone and Sharpley, 2008).
Therefore, this paper assumes a more nuanced and experiential approach to understanding
(and reconceptualising) dark tourism; one which gives attention to the tourist’s lived and
subjective experience, rather than focusing on death/atrocity per se as integral to early
de?nitions of dark tourism which renders death a mere commodity for consumption. Indeed,
this case study research reveals that not all tourism is free from shades of darkness
(Hepburn, 2012). In addition, from a supply perspective, travel to Iran, a country portrayed
as being dangerous, with socio-political con?ict, and for which most governments issue
travel restrictions, can also be considered a place that is ‘‘dark’’ within existing de?nitions
(Biran and Poria, 2012; Bowman and Pezzullo, 2010).
In short, the case study presented in this paper can be considered ‘‘dark tourism’’ because,
?rstly, places of socio-political danger are noted as ‘‘dark’’ places where tourists gaze upon
‘‘dark’’ aspects that are (socially constructed as) forbidden or hostile to international tourists.
Secondly, from an experiential perspective, the lived incidental nature of the tourist’s
experience in that place can also be ‘‘dark’’ (an experience of ‘‘darkness’’) through the
negative consumption and performance of danger, deviance, voyeurism or fear, as
described here in the context of Andrew’s imprisonment. As such, drawing on the
expression of Hepburn (2012), this paper not only reveals tourism in darkness as well as
tourism about darkness, it also reveals tourism as darkness.
Interviewing Andrew Barber online
To understand Andrew Barber’s lived experience of his travel in Iran, a qualitative approach
was deemed most appropriate. Indeed, qualitative methodologies have gained momentum
in tourismstudies, especially with respect to capturing the embodied and experiential nature
of tourism (Ateljevic et al., 2007; Chambers, 2007; Jamal and Hollinshead, 2001; Phillimore
and Goodson, 2004). To capture Andrew’s lived experience, an online interview method was
necessary. The respondent had just arrived in England from Iran when we started our
interviews, replying to our post on the Thorn Tree Travel online forum of the Lonely Planet
network. The use and study of computer-mediated communications (CMC) spans almost
every academic discipline and methodological approach, contends Markham (2004).
Indeed, in the wider social sciences, more precisely in sociology, anthropology and human
geography, amongst others, online methods have been increasingly used, for example
‘‘netnography’’ (Denzin, 2004; Hine, 2005; Johns et al., 2004; Kozinets, 2010; Mann and
Stewart, 2000; Wittel, 2000). Hall (2011) points out that there is a considerable body of
literature on e-tourism, but only an inconsiderable amount is qualitative.
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Online interviews for this study were conducted with Andrew Barber on 21 August 2010, 22
August 2010, 27 May 2011, and the last one on 2 December 2011. The interviews lasted on
average two to four hours. All of them were conducted on Skype in a written form and did not
involve audio or video formats. A number of electronic mails were also exchanged using
Yahoo! Mail during these interview times. However, Hine (2005) argues that ‘‘social research
methods have always had to be adaptive’’ (p. 2), and more so when used in the online world.
Notably, we had to adapt to the feed of the online connection. It was not a conscious decision
to interview Andrew using text Skype rather than audio and/or video conferencing, simply
that the online connection on both sides did not support an uninterrupted video and audio
chat. After the initial online contact via electronic mail in which Andrew agreed to online
interviewing, he was electronically mailed an information sheet and consent form. The of?ine
ethical regulations were adapted to the online setting and we ensured that the interviewee
made an informed decision to participate in the research.
The advantage of the instant messaging interviews with Andrew was the real-time nature of
the exchange, which has much in common with the traditional face-to-face on-site interview.
It is also an advantage from an ethical perspective in the sense that participants ‘‘have the
opportunity to protect themselves from making injudicious comments’’ (Bampton and
Cowton, 2002, para. 8). Further, participants are free to choose to answer at their own
convenience. Researchers, too, ?nd it a convenient tool for it does away with being present
in person, being self-conscious of how one behaves and speaks, and it eliminates the
fretting over a certain sentence that was said or a gesture that was done in a face-to-face,
in-person interview (Bampton and Cowton, 2002). Andrew also reportedly found the
interviews useful, as they ‘‘help to keep the mind off the past few months’’ (personal
communication, 21 August 2010).
One disadvantage of the online interviewing technique is the lack of social and bodily cues.
This disadvantage of the disembodiment of the online, synchronous interview makes a
noticeable difference. Even with the option of using more and more developed and
expressive emoticons present in all forms of instant messaging, online synchronous
interviews remain largely disembodied. Emoticons are used to replace ‘‘the absence of
social cues’’ (Opdenakker, 2006, p. 6) to show emotions, to establish the tone of the chat, it
sometimes includes ‘‘verbal descriptions of feelings and sounds’’, for laughter, for example,
‘‘hehehe’’ can be used (Mann and Stewart, 2000, p. 15). Indeed, emoticons helped shape
the affective tone of the interview.
The interviews were based on questions regarding Andrew’s motivation to travel to Iran, his
views on whether he considered the country ‘‘dangerous’’ for international tourists and the
lived experiences of his travel. Our online discussions were aimed at unravelling some of his
deepest thoughts and feelings experienced during this ‘‘dark’’ trip, so as to understand
‘‘what is so dark about dark tourism?’’. The data were analysed through the prism of
psychoanalysis, more speci?cally voyeuristic theories postulated by Freud (1938, 1984) and
Lacan (1977a, b). The key themes of dark tourism motivations, actively but perhaps
unconsciously seeking ‘‘darkness’’ and the thrill of danger, as well as emotional
performances, emerged from the data. Throughout this paper we support our arguments
with lengthy excerpts from the interviews. This was meant to make the process more
transparent and to avoid the charge sometimes levelled at qualitative researchers that
they/we simply select a ‘‘few unrepresentative quotes to support their initial prejudices
(sometimes referred to disparagingly as ‘cherry picking’)’’ (Jackson, 2001, p. 202).
We openly acknowledge the use of a single case study in this research. The study of the
(subjective) leisure experience has similarly been presented through the use of a single case
(see, for example, McCormick, 1996). The bene?ts of presenting a single case include being
able to provide a richness and depth from which to view the case’s world; such that the
reader’s awareness and understanding may be expanded (McCormick, 1996). A single
case provides a unique, intimate and emic understanding of the phenomenon being
studied. Whilst we recognise the limitations of the case study approach taken here, and as
such, generalisations cannot be inferred from the ?ndings, we argue that there is merit in
critically exploring the motivations and emotional experiences of tourist(s) travelling to
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places that may be considered forbidden, dangerous or hostile in an attempt to further
understand the concept of dark tourism from an experiential perspective. To this end, we
present Andrew’s dark tourism story below using quotes from his online interviews.
Andrew Barber – a ‘‘dark’’ tourist pro?le
I am in short a professional traveler. I have been on the road for about 17 years, and work along
the way. I’ve been to about 70 countries and I wanted to go someplace I’d not yet been. Iran is
known for its amazing hospitality, history, culture, and I wanted to see it. [. . .] regarding political
hot spots, I generally don’t listen nor believe or agree with the news and how it’s reported. I’ve
spent months in places like Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Colombia, and honestly they are some of the most
amazing countries to visit and the people always friendly.
This is how Andrew de?nes himself, a professional traveler who was in no apparent way
affected by news media imagery about Iran, but he was nevertheless familiar enough with
them not to believe them. The desire to experience countries like Iran, for Andrew, can
perhaps be linked to the quest for ‘‘other’’ places of danger, con?ict and ‘‘darkness’’.
Andrewexplains his motivations of travelling to dangerous areas: ‘‘think of all you hear about
so many places, it’s never true. We’d never leave the house if one believed all one hears’’. To
facilitate this quest, he travels for three to six months every year and works the rest of the
year, or ‘‘whatever it takes to keep me going’’. With such a lifestyle, Andrew contends that ‘‘I
don’t have a home as such. The more you dive and hear stories, the more you want to visit’’.
Iran is a country where acts of crime, terror and socio-political con?icts have occurred
especially since the country’s contested presidential election on 12 June 2009. In such a
place, as a tourist, Andrew, was outwardly enticed by ‘‘Iran’s amazing hospitality’’, thus he
stepped back from the negative media imagery, an aspect that seems to de?ne Andrew
Barber’s tourist pro?le since he also travelled to and worked in another sensitive country in
the region, namely Iraq during the 2003 war. Thus, before travelling to Iran in 2010 Andrew
worked in Iraq for the delivery company DHL. Re?ecting on his travel and work experiences
in Iraq, he recounts:
If you wanted out [of Iraq during the war], you could get out, but I was having a great time and
every month I worked was another year of travel. I felt very safe. The beginning of the war was
cowboy country and there were no rules, so if you knew how to survive, it was a GREAT deal of
fun. [. . .] I admit that the ?rst missile that came in was strange, but by the time I left, I’d had over
400 attacks in the places I was living. I had a few close calls for sure.
To a certain extent his experiences in Iraq represented his ‘‘demise’’ in Iran, as the
photographs taken in Iraq were stored on his laptop and this led Iranian investigators to
believe the English tourist had been involved in espionage. The desire to experience places
of danger such as Iraq and Iran can be explained using Lacan’s scopic drive or the drive to
gaze whereby ‘‘the subject [is] lost and suddenly refound in the con?agration of shame, by
the introduction of the other’’ (Lacan, 1977b, p. 182). Lacan goes on to argue that what the
person is really looking for and what he/she ?nds ‘‘is merely a shadow, a shadow behind the
curtain, [and] there he will phantasize any magic of presence’’ (Lacan, 1977b, p. 182). For
Lacan, phantasy is akin to a frozen scene from a jammed reel in a ?lm projector before a
traumatic event happens (Kingsbury and Brunn, 2004). Freud considers phantasies as
substitutes for what cannot be achieved in reality (Frosh, 2003). The distinction between
reality and phantasy is a problematic one and will always break down, the reason being the
activity and dynamism of the unconscious, which Freud maintains pervades all of our
thinking. Thus, the boundary between the reality of the ‘‘?rst missile and over 400 attacks’’ on
the one hand, and Andrew feeling ‘‘very safe’’ on the other hand, seems to blur within the
dynamic activity of his unconscious.
The ‘‘magic’’ or the ‘‘great deal of fun’’, to use Andrew’s words of his experiences in Iraq
during the Second Gulf War, represents what and how the tourist performs as a
consequence of the gaze which is ‘‘fundamentally oriented towards a lack’’ (Grosz, 1992,
p. 449). In this respect the gaze is different from a perception, it is not internal, it is situated
on the outside ‘‘like desire itself, the gaze emanates fromthe ?eld of the Other’’ (Grosz, 1992,
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p. 449). Places of con?ict, torn by the war such as Iraq during 2003 to 2005, or portrayed as
dangerous like Iran, represent in this case the ‘‘other’’ that brings about a gaze outside to the
subject, a voyeuristic gaze. The active drive to look at – scopophilia – and take pictures of
buildings – voyeurism – in war-torn Iraq and of landscapes with pylons near a power plant in
Iran can be active and masculine Freud (1984) argues. This is reciprocated by its passive
and therefore feminine form, according to Freud (1984), of the exhibitionism displayed by
such places. These dark places of danger and con?ict are ‘‘subjecti?ed’’ to exhibit an
attraction to be gazed upon. As mentioned in the introduction of this paper, scopophilic
impulses are directly linked to the desire for mastery and the desire to know (epistemophilia)
(Grosz, 1992). Andrew’s ‘‘being on the road for 17 years and having lived in over 70
countries’’ can potentially, therefore, be explained through the concept of epistemophilia –
the desire to know the world.
The ‘‘dark’’ experiential nature of imprisonment
While Andrew feels his time visiting Iraq was ‘‘a great deal of fun’’, he is more sarcastic of his
experience in the Iranian jail. Andrew ‘‘humorously’’ recounts his experience of being
arrested and ‘‘?own to Tehran, compliments of the police. 58 days in Evin prison and
released on the 17th [of August 2010]. Basically 21 days travel and then prison’’. His
recollections of his arrest are vivid:
I was hitching in the back of a car [. . .] and they [police] pulled us over, put me in their vehicle and
then took us all to the police station. I’m not sure exactly but the people [local Iranians] who gave
me a lift are in a lot of trouble and still may be in trouble. All of it was in Farsi but when at the police
[station] a soldier who spoke English translated for me, no shouting, only talking. [. . .] over the
next 12 hours [I was interviewed] by about 8 different investigators. Gradually the chain of
command brought in more and more important investigators. [. . .] I was not worried at all because
I had done nothing. [. . .] About 8 hours into the whole thing, I started to worry a bit and asked if
perhaps I should contact my embassy. It’s a ?ne line between pushing them and getting released
and I didn’t want to cause problems too much because I still had no worries [. . .] the next day I
had to appear before a judge and he said I was a spy. After this, I requested my embassy for sure.
Still, and it surprise me a bit, I have always remained calm throughout the entire deal, never really
losing it emotionally. When I was being ?own/transferred to Tehran, I was told I was being taken to
my embassy and we’d all discuss things so that was not a problem [. . .] just a lie! No real
information about staying longer, again, just more and more people coming in, and bigger and
bigger ?sh who wanted to talk to me. [. . .] They inform you basically of nothing. That’s the whole
scheme to the whole thing. In prison as well, absolutely no information whatsoever [. . .] It’s a form
of what is called white torture rather than physical torture.
A case of an imprisoned tourist debated in the literature, more speci?cally in the ?eld of
geography, is that of Ghazi Falah. A tourist, a political geographer of Palestinian descent, a
tenured professor at a university in Canada, a dual citizen of Israel and Canada, Ghazi Falah
was arrested in July 2006 near the Lebanese border by the Israel Security Agency (Gravois,
2007). ‘‘Earlier that day, he had visited a popular tourist site where the border meets the
coast, taking a mix of sightseer’s snapshots and other photographs, framed with a
geographer’s eye, of the topography’’ described Gravois (2007, p. 1) of Falah’s case. Falah
describes his detention as ‘‘28 days in hell’’ (Falah, 2007, p. 587). AndrewBarber in The Sun
Magazine equally presents the Iranian jail as ‘‘a hellish place’’ (O’Shea, 2010). ‘‘Hell’’ seems
to be the common denominator in these two cases, ‘‘the descriptor ‘hell’ for such a space is a
true signi?er for these jails, [which are] invisible sites around the globe where academics
and others are detained and degraded. The lived reality is shattering’’ (Falah, 2007, p. 587).
We, the two authors of this paper, have not lived that reality and in this paper we do not seek
to ponti?cate on that, but rather to examine, through the prisms of tourism and voyeurism,
motivations and behaviour that led to ‘‘a lived reality in the prison’’ while touring in a place of
danger and con?ict.
Tourists have traditionally been regarded as yearning to spend holidays in peaceful and
tranquil destinations where physical safety and the security of their belongings are
guaranteed. Interestingly enough most historical evidence shows that travel for the purpose
of pleasure, trade, religion or military service has been associated with risk-taking and fear
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for loss of physical integrity (Holden, 2005). Travelling to Iran, a country on most travel
warning lists, Andrew embodies the example of travel and tourism associated with
risk-taking as well as fear. Indeed, the experience that Andrew relayed of his imprisonment
was emotional:
I was a little worried on the plane [to Tehran in the company of Iranian police]. I remember looking
at the big white ?uffy clouds and decided I’d look at themfor some time as it might be the last time
I’d get to enjoy the feeling. Very nice clouds. [. . .] all you must do is deal with what your mind
thinks and I turned mine off very quickly. [. . .] If I die tomorrow, I’ve lived and I feel good about that
[. . .] I only want to die quickly if it happens. Perhaps my luck is lessening, so I may adapt my
lifestyle as such but probably not, as I know myself. [. . .] The only fear was how long it would take
to get out. I was never really afraid though. I took it one day at a time and put goals or timelines on
myself. Again though, this Iranian guy assured me that all foreigners are released. My biggest
fear by far was that at some time, I’d lose my mind [. . .] I tried not to ask myself ‘‘why, or I wonder
if’’ because it just made no sense.
As is argued elsewhere (see Buda and McIntosh, 2012), emotions matter and de?ne tourist
engagements in and with places of danger and con?ict. In the above excerpt, re?ecting on
his emotional state at the beginning of the whole ordeal, Andrew’s emotions gradually
increase frombeing ‘‘a little worried on the plane’’ to contemplating his biggest fear of losing
his mind. His crescendo account re?ects mixed feelings and struggles to stay calm. His
worry was balanced by the ‘‘big, white ?uffy clouds [. . .] very nice clouds’’ at which he could
gaze from the plane ?ying him to the prison; enjoying that feeling was counteracted by the
thought of possibly being dead the following day. The absence of such con?icting emotions
may have been more problematic than recognising his confused, fearful and worried state.
Andrew admitted to having felt fear, which gradually increased as he was never given
information on what was to follow:
Mostly fear of the unknown. How are friends and family reacting? Do they even know I’m gone?
They were actually much later in responding than I expected, about 2-3 weeks in fact. The
biggest thing that set them off that something was wrong was I did not respond in any form to my
sister’s triathlon ironman race which I always do as I used to do them as well [. . .]. I had some
fears of getting sick [. . .] in general though, you try to clear your mind of absolutely everything and
just get through the days. I don’t know that it was ever exciting. Very monotonous more than
anything. I was very happy that I have the ability to do nothing [. . .] Some people need to do
something all day, and I do not. So doing nothing all day was quite easily [. . .] I quickly tried to
occupy my time and made decks of cards to play solitaire, made dice from sugar cubes and
played myself in backgammon, drew pictures, tracked movement, listed past countries visited
etc. [. . .] anything to take my mind off what most people think one should think about like family.
Fear of the unknown pushed Andrewto create a world of his own in his mind in which he took
refuge. Thus, he played solitaire, backgammon, tracked his life that far. He explains how he
engaged his body in push ups, sit-ups to, perhaps, release the tension and fear of his dark
thoughts described below:
A lot during the ?rst few days. I looked in the cell for how I could do it etc. It’s a very common
thought, very hard to do but the thoughts were there. I also wrote another will whilst inside, but it
was taken from me and destroyed as I’d found a pen in my cell and was not allowed to have one
[. . .] Just ?gured that suicide was a natural progression in the thought process and maybe
instead, went on to thoughts about how to keep myself as healthy as possible. Push-ups, sit-ups,
eating everything. [. . .] On day eight, I lost the plot, the only time I really lost control of myself but
quickly got over it and put a 180-day mark on my makeshift calendar and decided that I could
make 180 days if necessary, especially since I’d already done 1/3 of it [. . .] Other emotions [. . .] I
had a few female friends who I really thought of a lot, and got closer to God. I was never religious
but decided that any prayers could only hope, if only for my sanity.
Emotions in general, and fear in particular are important in examining experiences of
voyeurism in dark tourism. In psychoanalysis, voyeurism refers to any sexual satisfaction
obtained fromvision, it usually is associated with a keyhole aspect and a ‘‘fearful’’ violation of
space, like Freud’s example of the Peeping Tom looking through the shutters at Lady Godiva
(Sarup, 1992). As mentioned in the introduction to this paper, we examine the object of
darkness rather than the object of sexual fantasy in relation to the interconnections between
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dark tourism and vouyeurism. Considered broadly, psychoanalytic theories of voyeurism
could be applied to the desire to gaze upon something that is (socially constructed) as
forbidden and may therefore bring about fear, like a place that represents the violence and
danger of an ongoing con?ict such as a border, a checkpoint or even a town located at the
heart of the con?ict. The desire to look upon something that is forbidden is counteracted by a
repulsion of the object of desire. In this respect Freud (1984) explains ‘‘repulsion operates
from the direction of the conscious upon what is to be repressed [. . .] attraction is exercised
by what was primarily repressed upon everything with which it can establish a connection’’
(p. 148). The initial desire that Andrew felt to visit Iran for its incredible hospitality seem to
have turned into repulsion manifested through suicidal thoughts which he tried to regard as
‘‘natural’’, if only to maintain his sanity.
Conclusion
Moving beyond a mere simplistic understanding of the phenomenon, this paper has
examined the experiential nature of dark tourism, and seeks to offer a more holistic and
nuanced perspective in this regard. Previous descriptive conceptualisations render dark
tourism a commodi?ed product and dark tourists a homogenous group and passive
receptors (Lisle, 2007; Wight and Lennon, 2007). An approach which emphasises the
subjective over the objective (without creating an opposing binary subjective/objective) and
lived incidental descriptions of the individual’s (deviant) experiences of tourism renders
different motives for, and experiences of, ‘‘darkness’’. In particular, the motives for travel and
experiences examined in this paper reveal a qualitatively different approach and more
re?exive narrative from those of previous dark tourism studies which mainly reveal the
experiences about remembrance, spirituality, mourning, educational, personal meaning,
and so on (Biran et al., 2011). Rather, in our qualitative analysis of the dark tourist, Andrew
Barber, we reveal that tourism can also be experienced as ‘‘dark’’ through negative deviant
behaviour and the consumption of fear and danger. Such lived experiences can tell us a
great deal about the potentially transgressive (and even transformative) relationship
between tourism, danger and con?ict in a globalised world. Lisle (2000, 2007) argues that
previous tourism studies have tended to perpetuate a notion of tourism merely equated with
peace, security and prosperity in ‘‘safe’’ places where danger and military activity are
absent.
Arguably, ‘‘because tourists and terrorists rely on the same communication, transportation,
and support infrastructure and because terrorists have targeted tourist destinations and
transport systems, the threat of death exists, however minimally, in virtually every popular
tourist destination’’ (Bowman and Pezzullo, 2010, p. 191). It is no longer possible to
guarantee the continuation of post/modern tourismin places unimpeded by the disruption of
war, con?ict or terrorism. Indeed, some tourists now search for dangerous places or
‘‘war-zone hopping’’, thus drawing closer parallels between the mobility experiences of
tourists and soldiers (Lisle, 2000, p. 11). The claim, therefore, that dark tourism is primarily
driven by the search for danger, or the desire to be commemorative about past ‘‘dark’’
events, rather than voyeuristic in terms of gazing at sites of violence, death or con?ict
ignores the serendipity and deviance of lived tourismexperiences and further conforms dark
tourism to the parameters of the tourist gaze (Lisle, 2007). The tourist gaze does not
guarantee safety.
Thus, we share the desire of other scholars (for example, Biran and Poria, 2012; Bowman
and Pezzullo, 2010; Hepburn, 2012; Osbaldiston and Petray, 2011; Sharpley, 2005; Stone,
2011) to re-conceptualise dark tourism in a way that hints at the complexities that surround
dark situations as lived, rather than merely as an identi?able ‘‘attraction’’. The concept of
‘‘voyeurism’’ is one lens, we argue, through which this may be attempted by applying it to
understand the motives and (incidental) experiences of tourists visiting sites of con?ict or
danger. Our study on vouyeuristic interpretations of dark tourism experiences may be
considered brief and cursory, as are most initial attempts to inject new dimensions to an
increasingly maturing sub-?eld like dark tourism. However, Lisle (2007) explains that
voyeurism is one way we might achieve a fundamental shift in the way we understand, for
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example, tourists in sites of con?ict and the relationship between danger and tourism, and
consequently the re?exive ‘‘dark’’ recounts of tourists’ experiences. Other lenses may
include theories of violence, war, social injustice, the sacred, horror, mortality, amongst
others, that help recognise the fragility of life in general, individual mortality or question the
human ability to act inhumanely (Bowman and Pezzullo, 2010). In so doing, we drive the
challenge to really ask ‘‘What is so ‘dark’ about tourism in general rather than just salient to
dark tourism?’’ - both within and outside of destinations to which travel may be considered
‘‘dangerous’’.
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Corresponding author
Dorina Maria Buda can contacted at: [email protected]
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