گردشگري پسامدرن

POSTMODERN TRAVEL/TOURISM

The postmodern tourist or post-tourist  ...

  knows she is a tourist; she does not suffer from nostalgia in historic places and attempt to travel back in time; she knows that what she is seeing is 'constructed' either literally (in a theme park, resort or holiday village) or culturally (in a heritage site); she knows that there are no unspoilt beaches, no unclimbed mountains, no really 'foreign' shores; she knows that as a tourist she is affecting what she sees - she participates in the construction of tourist sights/sites. The post-tourist is a reader of signs and a consumer of sights/sites, she knows the real is no longer what it used to be.

The tourist is an unthinking consumer, the post-tourist consumes, critically.
 

Alternative Realities and Virtual Travel

The post-tourist stays at 'home', where home is mobile, transitory, provisional - travelling at home.

Travel is abstract or virtual  – the post-tourist surfs the web.

In an image-dominated world, the experiential world is on the web, TV, video - the 'real' world is only material for images.

Ultimately, the world makes a copy of itself - the complete copy of the world - simulacrum  - see The Matrix "welcome to the desert of the real".

Postmodern journeys may be virtual and do not necessarily involve physical travel (at least not long, and hardly ever arduous, journeys). Postmodern journeys need only persuade us (who are willing to disbelieve reality) that we have changed place or crossed boundaries.