Affective spaces, sensuous engagements: in quest of a synaesthetic approach to ‘dark memorials’

Abstract

Although relatively recent, the concepts of ‘dark tourism’, ‘difficult heritage tourism’ and ‘Holocaust tourism’ have already been approached from historical, cultural, sociological, anthropological and managerial perspectives. The article offers a philosophical inquiry of ‘dark attractions’, inspired by Deleuze and Guattari’s work on aesthetics, with an aim of divorcing the term ‘dark tourism’ from its typically negative valance. It makes use of a synaesthetic understanding of experience and relies on an enlarged idea of perception conceptualised as a dynamic continuity between bodily/affective and intellectual cognitive faculties that are activated in the vibrant interaction with the architectural landscape of the ‘dark site’. The emphasis on immediate perception necessarily implies formulation of a concept of ‘affective aesthetics’ which refers to bodily process, a vital movement that triggers the subject’s passionate becoming-other, where ‘becoming’ stands for an intensive flow of affective (micro)perceptions. Such an approach sheds a different light on ‘Holocaust tourism’ and the ‘pleasures’ associated therewith, especially because it provides an explanation to a situation (common at many Holocaust memorials) when visitors are pleased, or positively affected, with representation/image/expression of sadness/atrocity. The synaesthetic operations of ‘dark attractions’ will be briefly illustrated with an example of the Holocaust memory site in Bełżec, Poland.

Keywords:

• dark tourism
• affects
• Holocaust memorials
• senses
• aesthetics

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments on a previous version of the manuscript. I also thank the editor of the journal, Professor Laurajane Smith, for her continuous productive advice and helpful suggestions. Finally, my warm thanks go to my colleagues and friends, Dr Aleksandra Różalska, Dr Heather Hadar Wright and Dr Marek M. Wojtaszek for being my critical readers and discussants.

Notes

1. ‘Heritage tourism’ is deliberated upon by widely understood memory studies. Important in this context is, as Macdonald underlines, ‘materialisation of memory in heritage’, that is, ‘the complex and particular coming together of a mix of agents (human and non-human)’ as well as its ‘unpredictable – though not unpatterned and random – effects’ (2013, 6).

2. For a critical overview of contemporary affect theories see Leys (2011) or Wetherell (2012).

3. This point is made clear in Massumi’s discussion of Sturm and Grewe-Partsch experiment, wherein he explores different configurations of affect and emotion/language (2002a).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Centre (Poland) [grant number 2012/05/B/HS2/04032].