Today's post is written by Pamela Tinnen, whose research explores tourism, voyeurism, death and the body.
“The almost fashionable success of anatomy cannot be attributed solely to scientific curiosity. It is not hard to understand; it corresponds to an attraction to certain ill-defined things at the outer limits of life and death, sexuality and pain”
- Philipe Ariés
People are fascinated by images of death. What happens when the deceased body becomes transformed into a commonplace voyeuristic experience? Corpses are already available for touristic consumption in a variety of contexts. Mummies from ancient Egypt, archaeological or anthropological collections of skeletons, and holy relics such as the embalmed corpses of saints are several examples of institutionalized human remains where the general public is welcome to engage with the physical presence of death. Sites that house dead human bodies and body parts advance questions regarding the propriety of displaying corpses as museum objects, but more importantly, they reflect a societal compulsion to witness reflections of death.
Often in sites of so-termed Dark Tourism, aspects of the death experience are qualified through an individual confrontation with a private thanatological experience. When I visit, for example, Ground Zero, Auschwitz, or the Vietnam Memorial, I become aware of the fleeting nature of life, feel sympathy, and, as a result, experience a heightened sense of my own mortality. I become aware of the death subject by situating it within a time and place wherein the death itself is an abstraction of the non-present dead subject(s). Confronting the implication of death, the viewing subject likely identifies with the death subject and feelings of emotional and physical empathy occur. However, this is distinct/ (different) from sites that host physical displays of the dead human body. Indeed, although the abstract concept of ‘death’ is often conflated with the objects that represent it—cadaver, corpse, specimen, remains, carcass, bones, skeleton, mummy, etc.—‘death’ is not the dead body. When the viewing subject confronts a physical (often anonymous) human specimen, s/he encounters a dead object, rather than a death experience. Concepts of mortality are also called into question, but, more precisely, we confront the limitations of our physical bodies.
“The almost fashionable success of anatomy cannot be attributed solely to scientific curiosity. It is not hard to understand; it corresponds to an attraction to certain ill-defined things at the outer limits of life and death, sexuality and pain”
- Philipe Ariés
People are fascinated by images of death. What happens when the deceased body becomes transformed into a commonplace voyeuristic experience? Corpses are already available for touristic consumption in a variety of contexts. Mummies from ancient Egypt, archaeological or anthropological collections of skeletons, and holy relics such as the embalmed corpses of saints are several examples of institutionalized human remains where the general public is welcome to engage with the physical presence of death. Sites that house dead human bodies and body parts advance questions regarding the propriety of displaying corpses as museum objects, but more importantly, they reflect a societal compulsion to witness reflections of death.
Often in sites of so-termed Dark Tourism, aspects of the death experience are qualified through an individual confrontation with a private thanatological experience. When I visit, for example, Ground Zero, Auschwitz, or the Vietnam Memorial, I become aware of the fleeting nature of life, feel sympathy, and, as a result, experience a heightened sense of my own mortality. I become aware of the death subject by situating it within a time and place wherein the death itself is an abstraction of the non-present dead subject(s). Confronting the implication of death, the viewing subject likely identifies with the death subject and feelings of emotional and physical empathy occur. However, this is distinct/ (different) from sites that host physical displays of the dead human body. Indeed, although the abstract concept of ‘death’ is often conflated with the objects that represent it—cadaver, corpse, specimen, remains, carcass, bones, skeleton, mummy, etc.—‘death’ is not the dead body. When the viewing subject confronts a physical (often anonymous) human specimen, s/he encounters a dead object, rather than a death experience. Concepts of mortality are also called into question, but, more precisely, we confront the limitations of our physical bodies.
Public fascination with displays of the dead and the dying human body is a complicated phenomenon not easily attributed to one specific motivator. Perhaps galvanized by scientific, forensic, intellectual, religious or emotional curiosity, the general public will often engage in practices of tourism that condone and produce demand for displays of the dead. By inquiring into the history and trajectory of public dissection, professional and popular anatomical museums, and contemporary exhibitions like Body Worlds, I attempt to distinguish that the impetus which drives the touristic consumption of death-objects (corpses) is separate from that which drives scholarship of Dark Tourism, and therefore concedes demand for a new field of museum studies research which focuses specifically on tourism for physical human remains.
Concentrating on the development of the field’s audience and objects, I begin with a synopsis of the historic relationship that Western society has held with the touristic consumption of the death-object. Following this survey, I speculate on the degrees and experiential elements of death-object tourism, which I have named Abjectourism, that situate it as a unique and largely unconsidered form of lurid tourism.
For more on Tinnen and her work, please visit her website here.
Image above is a Damien Hirst installation.
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