Gazing at Death: Dark Tourism as an Emergent Horizon of Research

An ever-increasing number of tourists annually visit places which have been hit by disasters, or remembering onslaughts, genocides or places of mass death. The Apollonian sense of beauty, which characterised the classic forms of tourism some time ago, sets the pace to new forms of gazing where death plays a vital role. Though under the name of dark, thana or morbid tourism, this new phenomenon is captivating the attention of scholars worldwide, and little research has advanced to explain the roots of this much deep-seated issue. The fact is that dark tourism oscillates from the visit to former concentration camps to abandoned prisons, which shows that what visitors want is to be closer to another individuals suffering. This point has spurred a heated debate over recent years, since while some groups of researchers see in dark tourism a sign of new sadism, another wave situates this as an anthropological attempt to understand the proper life through the lens of others tragedy. Whatever the case may be, this book intends to discuss not only the causes and effects of dark tourism in a secularised society, but also gives an all-encompassing model to policy makers, researchers, students and scholars to expand their current understanding. While orchestrated through different chapters, the main argument holds the thesis that dark tourism represents a mechanism in order for society to discipline death, in a moment where the process of secularisation has advanced to all spheres of public life.