“Post-viral tourism’s antagonistic tourist imaginaries”

Abstract

Purpose This paper aims to examine the antagonistic coexistence of different tourism imaginaries in global post-viral social landscapes. Such antagonisms may be resolved at the expense of the ethics of tourism mobility, if not adjudicated by post-human reflexivity. Currently, unreflexive behaviours involve the refusal to conform to lifesaving “stay-at-home” policies, the tendency to book holidays and the public inspection of death zones. Design/methodology/approach Each of the consumption styles explored in this paper to discuss post-COVID-19 tourism recovery corresponds to at least one tourist imaginary, antagonistically placed against social imaginaries of moral betterment, solidarity, scientific advancement, national security and labour equality. A multi-modal collection of audio-visual and textual data, gathered through social media and the digital press, is categorised and analysed via critical discourse analysis. Findings Data in the public domain suggest a split between pessimistic and optimistic attitudes that forge different tourism futures. These attitudes inform different imaginaries with different temporal orientations and consumption styles. Social implications COVID-has exposed the limits of the capacity to efficiently address threats to both human and environmental ecosystems. As once popular tourist locales/destinations are turned by COVID-2019s spread into risk zones with morbid biographical records their identities alter and their imaginaries of suffering become anthropocentric. Originality/value Using Castoriadis’ differentiation between social and radical imaginaries, Foucault’s biopolitical analysis, Sorokin’s work on mentalities and Sorel’s reflections on violence, the author argue that this paper has entered a new phase in the governance and experience of tourism, which subsumes the idealistic basis of tourist imaginaries as cosmopolitan representational frameworks under the techno-cultural imperatives of risk, individualistic growth through the adventure (“edgework”) and heritage preservation. This paper also needs to reconsider the contribution of technology (not technocracy) to sustainable post-COVID-19 scenarios of tourism recovery.

What has been said about the reinvention of post-COVID tourism: A bibliometric analysis

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“…In the recovery process from this pandemic, it was seen as an opportunity to reset (Everingham -Chassagne 2020) the tourism sector, where sustainability was the main concern. Especially by time, people started to focus more on the things that are really important to them and different concepts that could provide recreational activities started to gain popularity: slow tourism (Wen et al 2021), slow leisure (Breunig 2020), "Buen Vivir" (Good Living) (Everingham -Chassagne 2020), workcation and staycations (Tzanelli 2021). It is also expected that people will spend more time slowing down their activities (Benjamin et al 2020).…”

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“…Neoliberal apparatus and subjects are not foregoing the process of accumulation and investment in the self that tourism is, even if it is with the capture of (in)voluntary emotional labor of workers and host communities, as well as salvaging of environmental processes like climate change mitigation. In return, crises and threats transform imaginaries, sometimes in conflicting ways as Tzanelli (2021) exposes, and in the process, reappraising destination images and reshaping tourists' desires and behaviors.…”