LitHub: The Commodification of History

An excellent piece on LitHub about Dark Tourism and the conflicted nature of this activity, which effectively commodifies locations which have tragic histories and draws people towards them. Is this the touristic equivalent of 'rubber-knecking' when passing an incident on the motorway? It's also called Thanatourism.

I have a few books and magazines in this area, and had worked up some ideas, along with some borrowed bits for a scheme of work on alternative locations to visit. I've long had a fascination with visiting Chernobyl and was almost at the point of finalising plans to visit just before the pandemic. It will perhaps be quite a long time before anyone can visit again now.


Image: Ground Zero area of New York - Alan Parkinson - shared under CC license

Comments