On the political utterances of plantation tourists: vocalizing the memory of slavery on River Road

ABSTRACT

Within the study of southern plantation house museums, the cultural power that tourists exercise in interpreting, reacting to, and even shaping historical narratives has received limited attention. The purpose of this paper is to advance our understanding of the agency of visitors at plantation museums, paying particular attention to their verbal expressions as they respond to the depiction of slavery on guided tours. Spoken words, questions, and conversations of plantation tourists are not unproblematic transmissions of information but represent “political utterances” that play a crucial role in the constitution and mediation of the process of remembering (or forgetting) the enslaved. We consider the importance of tourist voice and outline two analytical settings for studying the political utterances of plantation visitors – the vocalizing of interpretative communities in post-tour or exit interviews and docent reaction to on-tour comments and questions posed by visitors. Drawing evidence from interviews with visitors and docents at four tourist plantation along the River Road District, we demonstrate the diversity and impact of the political utterances of tourists, and how these vocalizations of memory can possibly lead to greater changes in the way in which slavery is dealt with and remembered at southern plantation museums.

KEYWORDS:

• Docents
• slavery
• plantation
• tourist agency
• political utterance
• social memory

Notes on contributors

Derek H. Alderman is Professor and Head of the Department of Geography at the University of Tennessee. His specialties include social justice, public memory, heritage tourism, and the African-American experience, from slavery to the post-Civil Rights era.

E. Arnold Modlin Jr is Assistant Professor of Geography in the Department of History and Interdisciplinary Studies at Norfolk State University. Dr. Modlin is a cultural and historical geographer who researches the connections of memory, race and historic places in the US South and the Caribbean, especially slavery-related landscapes. Both Drs Alderman and Modlin are founding, partner scholars with RESET (Race, Ethnicity, and Social Equity in Tourism), a multi-university, NSF-funded initiative.