Defacing: affect and situated knowledges within a rock climbing tourismscape

Abstract

Rock climbing is frequently constructed as a tourism practice that exemplifies rational, solo, masculine quests to conquer the natural world. This paper troubles such gendered norms through an investigation of Southern Ontario’s Niagara Escarpment (Canada) as a space of climbing tourism. Drawing on actor-network theory, our aim is to situate the drifts and dissolutions of affect through the narrative capacities of rock climbing. Specifically, we engage with the Escarpment as a rock climbing tourismscape to illuminate the unexpected and productive qualities of affect in rock climbing, a process we describe as defacing. Defacings reconfigure how climbing feels, shift perceptions of conservation and sustainability away from human interests, and ultimately alter climbers’ relationships to natural spaces, prompting ways of knowing and being that trouble masculinist, rational conventions. In the context of welcoming creative solutions for promoting sustainable tourism, we illustrate how attending to the affective capacities of climbing can foster new, interesting, and vital possibilities.

Keywords:

• Affect
• rock climbing
• tourism
• defacing
• actor network theory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 In summer 2020, in conjunction with Black Lives Matter protests across North America, multiple public guides have revisited racist, sexist, and generally offensive route names in climbing. Spurred by outrage directed at MountainProject—an online database of global climbing routes—activists have flagged more than 5,000 routes for potential re-naming, including some of those listed here.

2 With the partial exception of Lion’s Head climbing area at the far north-western tip of the Escarpment, none of Ontario’s climbing areas are proximate to the types of climber-focused campgrounds common of destination climbing areas (or indeed, to any substantial camping amenities at all). Consequently, there is a disconnect in Ontario around locality and area-ownership—despite proximity to urban centres, there are few “true locals” since the Escarpment does not attract the residential climbing communities of Kentucky’s Red River Gorge, for example (Rickly, 2017b). In this sense, most Ontario climbers are tourists.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michela J. Stinson

Michela Stinson is Settler Canadian and a PhD student in the Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies at the University of Waterloo, Canada. Her research focuses on the affective, narrative, and social-material relations that configure and constitute tourism places.

Bryan S. R. Grimwood

Bryan Grimwood is Settler Canadian of British ancestry and an Associate Professor in the Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies at the University of Waterloo, Canada. His research analyzes human-nature relationships and advocates social justice and sustainability in contexts of tourism, leisure, and livelihoods.