Elsevier

Annals of Tourism Research

Volume 50, January 2015, Pages 39-51
Annals of Tourism Research

The death drive in tourism studies

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2014.10.008Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Interconnections between psychoanalysis and critical tourism research are addressed.

  • The psychoanalytic concept of the death drive is introduced in tourism studies.

  • Accessing the death drive tourists assert and disrupt fun/fear and life/death binaries.

  • Tourists in conflict zones renegotiate embedded memories and archaic traumas.

Abstract

The psychoanalytical concept of the death drive postulated by Freud and Lacan refers to a constant force at the junction between life and death, which is not understood in a biological sense of physical demise of the body, nor in opposition to life. Tourist experiences in conflict zones can be more critically understood through the lens of the death drive. Empirical data for this project draws on individual and group interviews undertaken with tourists and tourism industry representatives in Jordan. Findings suggest that by travelling in a conflict area some tourists negotiate embedded family memories and archaic traumas. Accessing the death drive, tourists also assert and disrupt binaries such as fun/fear and life/death.

Introduction

This article introduces the psychoanalytic concept of the death drive in tourism studies. I argue that tourist experiences in areas of socio-political conflict can be more critically explored by unpacking the uncanny juxtaposition of tourism with the death drive. Introducing the concept in tourism studies contributes to the scarce and “belated dialogue between critical tourism research and psychoanalytic approaches” (Kingsbury & Brunn, 2003, p. 40). Understandings of the death drive within the context of critical tourism research should not be regarded as clinical but conceptual. The death drive is not an essentialist and organicist concept. There is no innate, inborn death drive, rather we humans as cultural and social beings are afflicted with the death drive. In proposing this psychoanalytic concept in tourism studies I mainly turn to Ragland-Sullivan, 1987, Ragland-Sullivan, 1992, Ragland-Sullivan, 1995 and Boothby’s (1991) readings of Freud’s and Lacan’s theories on the death drive. My goal, however, like Kingsbury (2005), is not to merely superimpose the death drive on tourism studies, but to call for a genuine engagement with this concept so as to examine and understand, more critically, tourist experiences.

Ragland-Sullivan (1995) in her analysis of Lacan’s concept of the death drive asks “why would humans be motivated by death and not life?” (p. 85). In her attempt to answer this seemingly paradoxical question I might find the answer to my own query: how and in what ways is the death drive brought about and accessed, if at all, when travelling in areas of socio-political conflicts? The death drive is not understood in a biological sense of physical demise of the body. It is not in opposition to life. It is at the junction between life and death, as an interrelated compound, at the very heart of life phenomena (Lacan, trans. 1977a). Freud posed the death instinct as a biological reality that served to account for clinical and theoretical observations (Boothby, 1991). Lacan reworked Freud’s death instinct as a primordial drive aimed towards the unity of the ego, rather than being aimed against the persistence of the biological organism (Boothby, 1991, p. 71). Employing the death drive, I claim, tourist experiences in conflict zones can be more critically examined.

Data for this project was gathered from 25 international tourists who, like myself, travelled to Jordan in 2010, and from 24 Jordanian tourism industry representatives such as guides, travel company managers and owners. With all participants ethnographic methods of data collection, such as in-depth, semi-structured, individual and group interviews were used, an aspect discussed in more detail in the methods section. Throughout this article ‘conflict zone’ is used to refer to Jordan not as a country at war, especially considering that it signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994, but as a sensitive place where the conflicts from neighbouring countries spill over and affect tourism along with other aspects of daily life. The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is an Arab country in the southwestern part of Asia, bordered by Syria and Lebanon in the north, Iraq in the east, Saudi Arabia to the southeast, Egypt to the southwest, West Bank and Israel in the west.

The location of Jordan is of strategic importance. Historically it has been at the crossroads between the Arabian Peninsula and Syria. Nowadays, Jordan tries to maintain its stability in a region scarred by conflicts for more than six decades. In the last decade Jordan witnessed the Palestinian uprising in 2000-2001; the war in Afghanistan in 2001; in Iraq in 2003; the suicide bombings on three five-star hotels in the capital Amman in 2005; the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah war in Lebanon; rocket attacks and gunfire exchanges in October 2009 and August 2010 between Lebanon and Israel; and more minor rocket attacks in April and August 2010 in Jordan. More recently, in 2011 and 2012 Jordan was also part of the Arab Spring, a wave of demonstrations and protests that started in Tunisia in December 2010 when a man burned himself in protest at his treatment by police. The revolts spread into Algeria, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, and Libya.

In spite of the conflicts, tourist arrivals increased in 2005 by an estimated 8% (UNWTO, 2006). The United Nations World Tourism Organisation describes the Middle East as “one of the tourism success stories of the decade so far and leads the growth ranking of arrivals in 2007, with an estimated 16% rise to almost 48 million tourists” (UNWTO, 2008, p. 9). Jordan itself has experienced a steady increase in tourist arrivals from 2,383,400 in 2002 to 3,298,900 in 2007 (Jordan Tourism Board., 2009). In 2011 international tourist arrivals in the Middle East region decreased by 5%, but in 2012 Jordan rebounded with an increase of 5% (UNWTO, 2012). Jordan, therefore, offered a good position to analyse tourist experiences in an area of socio-political conflicts.

In-depth and critical understandings of such tourist experiences can be offered through the psychoanalytical concept of the death drive, as I argue in this article. First, I present theoretical considerations regarding interconnections between tourism, psychoanalysis and the death drive. The qualitative methodological approach used to obtain data relevant to the discussion on psychoanalytical connections in tourism is, afterwards, described. The analysis of the data, then, leads me to argue that when travelling in a conflict area, some tourists may access the death drive while negotiating family memories and archaic traumas. I also consider the ways in which binaries such as fun/fear and life/death are asserted and disrupted in Jordanian tourist spaces.

Section snippets

Introducing the death drive in tourism studies

By and large, tourism studies have left aside psychoanalysis as a form of knowledge to understand and interpret various tourist experiences, especially those involving fantasy, desires, drives and the unconscious, amongst others. “Engagements with psychoanalysis in tourism research are cursory at best” rightfully asserts Kingsbury (2005, p. 118). The author draws on Lacan’s concepts of jouissance, the pleasure principle, the Other, and fantasy to conceptualise the politics of enjoyment in

Methods

Empirical data for this article draws on in-depth, semi-structured, both individual and group interviews conducted with tourists and tourism industry representatives in Jordan during June-October 2010. The 25 international tourists I interviewed are the key protagonists. Information collected from 24 Jordanian industry representatives also complements understandings of tourist experiences in conflict zones. Participants for this project were recruited using a combination of techniques such as

Negotiating family memories and archaic traumas

It’s very personal because of the stories of my dad, he did the Algerian War and I can see the result 50 years later. … He was 20 years old when he left his [home]country, left the countryside, arrived in another country and was given a gun to save his life. I’m sure that the man who is my dad now is not the same one as before the war. So, I’m sad for them [the Israeli soldiers at the border with Jordan as seen at Bethany Beyond JordanThe Baptismal Site]. Seeing the weapons, okay, it’s not [a

Blurred lines: crossing fun/fear and life/death boundaries

I had tourists who came in 2003 when they started the war on Iraq and Iraq is on the border [with Jordan] and there were people here travelling and they said ‘you know what it doesn’t really scare us’. … They always ask ‘is it safe to leave the hotel?’, ‘is it safe to go and walk down in the market? ’ [In spite of the war] they still want to be here, it’s like, you know what, they want to go back to their country and say ‘do you know what, I was in that region during the war’, but there’s still

Conclusion

In this article I engaged with the death drive to show how some tourists access it in places (in the proximity) of an ongoing conflict in such ways as to trouble the life/death and fun/fear binaries. Analysing tourist narratives I discussed two points. First, I argued that travelling in a conflict area some tourists seek to negotiate and purge embedded memories and archaic traumas. I examined how family recollections are negotiated and reshaped. Amru’s desire to face his fear of death, Amir’s

Acknowledgements

I would like to sincerely thank the participants in this research project. Offering their time, sharing their feelings, insights and thoughts have made this study possible. I am grateful to all the staff at the American Centre for Oriental Research where I was hosted during my fieldwork in Amman, Jordan. Special thanks go to my colleagues who have commented on previous drafts of this article Anne-Marie d’Hauteserre, Lynda Johnston, Paul Kingsbury, Joseph Lema and Steve Pile. I am truly grateful

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