They take planes and fly around, like the great soaring birds who endlessly cross and recross the ocean. Like the albatross, we are looking for our soul. Tourism is a rehearsal for death. – J.G. Ballard

The arrival of a cruise ship and it’s pampered passengers to the shores of Haiti invokes instinctive revulsion after an earthquake that has killed more Haitians than the survivors can find the space to bury. The private beach where guests can ride jetskis and sip cocktails provides a look at modernised global inequality. Royal Carribean the ship’s operator is staffed by people from some of the poorest countries in the world. The cheap labour and land allow holiday makers to relax in style for less and there is nowhere these harsh economics are more obvious, yet magically suppressed than on a cruise ship.

It is almost a cliché now that dream holidays in the developing world are taken with extreme care to shield the customer from local, depressing reality. The gulf between the lives of those in Haiti and those paying the privilege to float on the colossus currently at anchor at it’s shore is not a new thing, but the outrage did not seem to exist before the earthquake. Also, the conditions under which cruise workers toil to provide for passengers luxurious comforts can easily be found and applied for our own everyday comforts in sweatshops and factories from Central America to South East Asia (unless your lifestyle does not include coffee, imported clothes, petrol, plastics and any form of computer technology – we are all beneficiaries of global inequality). It’s just that, on a cruise ship the labour is just a few decks below.

Perhaps Royal Carribean as an example of dark tourism is not the best, after all, their presence in Haiti is due to a refusal to change their normal route, rather than actively seeking out death and suffering which is the conventional definition of the phenomenon. The usual examples are battlefields such as Culloden in Scotland, cemeteries such as Arlington in America, concentration camps such as Auschwitz in Poland and sites of disaster either natural or man-made such as Ground Zero in New York or Chernobyl in Ukraine. There are also more esoteric examples such as the Hacienda Napoles in Colombia where you can visit the luxury estate of Pablo Escobar, one of recent history’s most vicious and successful criminal masterminds. Estimates are difficult, but it is thought he was responsible for more than 4,000 deaths. The site of many of murders, it has now been semi-restored as a sort of theme park. Visitors can imagine how the estate once was – by checking out Escobar’s now burnt out collection of vintage cars, admiring huge statues of dinosaurs or the remains of his collection of exotic animals from all over the world. Incidentally you can have a look at some fine photo’s of Escobar by his personal photographer here.

Dark tourism sites present governments and other authorities with some moral and ethical dilemmas. Complex issues are raised surrounding the extent and nature of the interpretation of sites associated with war, genocide, assassination and other tragic events. The questions revolve around the motivational drive behind “dark tourists” as well as the commercial development and exploitation of loss and grief. As a relatively new global phenomenon, it is hard to define an appropriate response to the nature of experience perceived by visitors, local residents, victims and their relatives. Not every persons gaze on a particular attraction is the same, this will differ not only between their context i.e. tourist or victim, but also between individuals of the same group. Tourism itself is constructed on the basis of difference, seeking experience which is in some way different from everyday life and work. Tourism results from a distinction between the ordinary and extraordinary. The way in which tourists encounter this difference has diversified considerably with the emergence of this sort of post-modern tourism. The new middle-class and independent travelers are increasingly rejecting the mainstream mass tourism in favour of a more specialised experience. These post-modern tourists seek not only minority and non-Western culture, but also to intellectualise and link their journey with learning and discovery.

The proprietors of dark tourist sites are often keen to adopt a perspective of rationality, of both progress and historicism. However, the educative elements of their offerings are often tempered by an orientation toward income generation and commodification. Some sites may seem weird or perverted, but dark tourism allows travellers to mix history with a sort of psychological adventure, combining sentimental emotion with physical activity. Pilgrimage to sites such as Auschwitz, Lockerbie or Ground Zero is associated with the untimely death of many individuals . Our motivations are murky and difficult to unravel: a combination of reverence, voyeurism and the thrill of coming to close proximity with death. Often, the difference between the acceptable and unacceptable as a tourist attraction is only chronological distance; tours of Jack the Ripper’s London are very popular, however, a Yorkshire Ripper trail would be seen as highly inappropriate by most people. Over half a million people pass under the “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign Auschwitz every year, the audience is given a two-and-a-half hour tour of the vast site. What a tourist can comprehend during such a brief visit is questionable. The operators of these sites are custodians of history and decide which parts of history to interpret and commemorate. It should be noted that the barbed wire and fences of the camp have been replaced many times due to corrosion, and human hair and other artifacts have been moved to Auschwitz from other concentration camps in order to provide a “better visitor experience”. Although abhorrent in their foundation, it is our own culture which decides what we will commemorate. Where, for example are the monuments and visitor centres to the genocide of American Indians or the first world peoples of Australia?

‘Dark tourism’ sites are important testaments to the consistent failure of humanity to temper our worst excesses and, managed well, they can help us to learn from the darkest elements of our past. But we have to guard against the voyeuristic and exploitative streak that is evident at so many of them.

Auschwitz – Tourism or Voyeurism?

DarkTourism.net

Guardian.co.uk/travel/dark-tourism