Postcolonial ambivalence as per the tourist
Introduction
Tourism studies that adopt critical postcolonial analysis have largely advanced our understanding of the touristic development of formerly colonised countries from a discursive perspective (Ashcroft et al., 2006; Bandyopadhyay, 2022; Bandyopadhyay & Morais, 2005; Bell, 2004; Buckley, 2013; Chadha, 2006; Chambers & Buzinde, 2015; Huggan, 2001; Keen & Tucker, 2012; Royle, 1997) and contribute to developing further critical discussions on otherness (Aitchison, 2016; Caton & Santos, 2008; Prasad & Prasad, 2003; Said, 1978; Staszak, 2008b), exoticism (Amirou, 2001; Huggan, 2001; Nayar, 2018; Staszak, 2008a) and authenticity (Nayar, 2018; Wong, 2013; Zhu, 2012). Under the (post)colonial scheme (Said, 1978), the cult of authenticity has been applied to construct ‘exotic’, ‘primitive’, and ‘pure’ of the ethnic and cultural other (Huggan, 2001; Peyvel, 2009) and also engaged to perpetuating such colonial stereotypes (Hollinshead, 1998b). However, authenticity, purity and originality have been further criticised to reverse the hierarchical dualism of the coloniser and the colonised through an original and copy paradigm (Bhabha, 1994; Hollinshead, 1998b). Bhabha's (1994) intervention involves the displacement and transformation of colonial stereotypes to reveal and subvert the fallacy of assertive assumptions about authenticity that are bound up within hegemonic and hierarchical representational structures. Several tourism scholars have accordingly focused on debating differences and otherness within Bhabha's discourses such as ‘hybridity’, ‘third places’ and ‘interstitial culture’, which disrupt and challenge the binaries of authentic/inauthentic and allow a more nuanced understanding of ‘othering’ which inevitably locates in power relations (Amoamo, 2011; Chakrabarti, 2010; Cho, 2021; Hollinshead, 1998a, 1998b, 2016). Their analysis has tended to avoid only linking ‘othering’ with authenticity in terms of tourism management and practice without questioning the complexities of cultural production, hybridization and processes of identification which lie under the surface.
In the quest and negation for authenticity, tourism has significantly contributed to stirring debates on authenticity and developing different perspectives for a better understanding of its complexity (Belhassen & Caton, 2006; Canavan & McCamley, 2021; Cohen, 1988; Cohen & Cohen, 2012; MacCannell, 1973; Moore & al., 2021; Wang, 1999; Zhu, 2012). Authenticity has eventually become one of the oldest and most discussed notions in tourism studies (Rickly, 2022). Discussions in tourism literature recently suggest that authenticity is a negotiation process (Canavan & McCamley, 2021; Halewood & Hannam, 2001; Liu et al., 2015; Rickly-Boyd, 2013) not only of real and fake (or authentic or inauthentic) (Andriotis, 2009; Wang, 1999) but also of reality and fantasy (Canavan & McCamley, 2021). Canavan and McCamley (2021, p. 5) further highlight that it concerns “contextual human strategies for negotiating the inner conflict such as avoidance, fantasy and inauthenticity, versus confrontation, reality and authenticity”. Even though the hierarchical claims of purity, originality or authenticity are invalid (Bhabha, 1994) and the claim for authenticity has been regarded as a cynical one, as “nothing can ever be added without purity being seen to be lost” (Amoamo, 2011, p. 1258; Schouten, 2007), the discourse and praxis of tourism management have demonstrated that authenticity represents strong importance and relevance to tourism and such authenticity is derived from the ongoing negotiation of tourists' inner conflict. Therefore, by exploring ambivalence, which refers to a human inner conflict between opposing reactions, beliefs or feelings, as well as the experience of having such an attitude toward objects, places, and people that contain both positively and negatively valenced components, this article aims to zoom in on authenticity in tourism and to observe tourists’ negotiation for authenticity in postcolonial tourism encounters. It may offer a valuable opportunity to examine emotions, attitudes or dispositions (Deleuze, 1992; Jovanović, 2016) of an individual and of the inner workings of the self in the reproduction and reinterpretation of postcolonial places.
Conflicting, contradictory and ambivalent emotions, thoughts and attitudes are one fundamental characteristic of human life (Berliner et al., 2016), which is rendered from the cognitive, emotional and social processes occurring in all human lives (Merton & Barber, 1963). The postcolonial discourse is particularly prone to producing emotions and feelings of ambivalence (Bhabha, 1994; Chadha, 2006). The exploration of “ambivalent statements, contradictory attitudes, incompatible values, and emotional internal clashes as research objects” and the demonstration of “how actors themselves live with and justify their contradictory thoughts and behaviours” (Berliner, 2016, p. 5–6) have already been critically problematized. In varying (post)colonial discourses (Bhabha, 1994; Chadha, 2006), most of the discussions have focused on a contested and conflicted political position toward colonial heritage from postcolonial perspectives (Breglia, 2009; Chadha, 2006; Leung, 2009; McLaren, 2006). However, even though tourism tends to “generate consistently ambivalent or contradictory representations” (Crick, 1989, p. 307) and tourism studies, which have adopted postcolonial perspectives, have significantly increased in volume (Amoamo, 2011; Caton & Santos, 2008; Chambers & Buzinde, 2015; Cho, 2021; Echtner & Prasad, 2003; Hall & Tucker, 2007; Keen & Tucker, 2012; Tucker, 2019; Wijesinghe, 2020; Zhang et al., 2022), unfortunately, the tourist's emotional depth of ambivalence is not thoroughly developed. Little scholastic investigation has focused on tourists' conflicting relationships with the past and the other in the postcolonial heritage context while overlooking that ambivalence studies can be extended further. Furthermore, the term ‘ambivalence’ has been hardly applied in tourism studies. The range, profundity and diversity of ambivalence felt, perceived and thought by tourists and its relevance to tourism studies remain unrevealed even though understanding the ambivalence would be a critical issue that tourism stakeholders and researchers should approach with more attention. Bhabha (1994), who thoroughly developed the notion of ambivalence, insists that ambivalence presents a split; doubled experience at the site of colonial dominance. Hollinshead (1998a, 1998b, 2016), who first interpreted Bhabha's perspectives to tourism studies, highlights that Bhabha's thinking on ambivalence must “be sensitively connected to the world of tourism” in order “to broaden [the] conceptuality of tourism studies” (Hollinshead, 1998b, p. 153). Therefore, this research aims to respond to these calls by way of critically analysing the ambivalence to understand the projection of authenticity within tourism imaginaries, experiences and practices.
Grounded in an interpretivist phenomenological approach with an emphasis on the nature and meanings of tourists being experienced and articulated as a particular phenomenon, the values of tourists as social actors in the construction of social knowledge (Berger & Luckmann, 1967) and the significance of interpretation as an intrinsic process of research (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000; Guba & Lincoln, 1989), this study employs ethnographic methods to understand the lived experiences and imaginaries of tourists in Bà Nà Hills, located in the Trường Sơn Mountains of the city of Da Nang, in central Vietnam. In postcolonial Vietnam, mimicking, imitating and copying Otherness have been further used to construct equivocal colonial places. The hill stations of Vietnam are representative postcolonial mimetic places located “in the paradox between the planned resort and the chaos, the dissonance” (Jennings, 2007, p. 329). Becoming ‘like but not quite’ (Bhabha, 1984) has been strategically designed in Bà Nà Hill for capitalistic benefits and advantages from tourism (Van, 2019) as if mimic-man strategically benefits from his ambivalent location and functions (Bhabha, 1984) since “the desire for mimicry of the colonized subverts practically his location from one of disadvantage to one of advantage” (Chakrabarti, 2010, p. 22). Bà Nà Hills per se represent as “ambivalent spaces” (Bhabha, 1994, p. 160), which stem from colonial heritages (Bhabha, 1994; Chadha, 2006; Jørgensen, 2019) and are being created by the postcolonial mimicry, concerned with constructing the self and social identity on Otherness. Their spatial ambivalence may largely contribute to the construction of tourism imaginaries (Salazar, 2012) and cultural constitutions of place (Oakes, 1997) and may also allow observing the ways in which such ambivalence can be experienced in relation to authenticity.
Ethnographic research by using face-to-face techniques such as in-depth interviewing and participant observation was undertaken from March to November in 2019. Given that this research focuses particularly on looking at ambivalent, antithetical and contradictory ways in which tourists negotiate, articulate and perceive a colonial past and colonial places in their experiences and tourism imaginaries (Gravari-Barbas & Graburn, 2012; Salazar, 2012) emphasising the function of producing meanings and the product of this function of tourism imaginaries (Ricoeur, 1994), the selected interview skills and processes were expected to encourage tourists to express their emotions, thoughts, “expected experiences, hoped for or feared at the destination, the practices these experiences induce” (Gravari-Barbas & Graburn, 2012), which is considered useful for discovering tourism imaginaries in less inhibited ways. This study is mainly concerned with indicating how tourists approach postcolonial equivocatory places and how tourists represent themselves and are represented to propose concrete examples of postcolonial ambivalence in the Bà Nà Hills of Vietnam. The ways in which opposing emotional and cognitive orientations toward colonial traces exist in touristic experiences from the postcolonial perspectives may potentially encompass a range of emotional opposites requiring ongoing negotiation as one of the repertoires of tourists and contribute to the close investigation of tourists’ reactions and negotiation toward a colonial story and place as well as authenticity that has been often taken as ambiguous, inconsistent, uncertain or disoriented.
Section snippets
Ambivalence
Ambivalence constitutes a human instinct of universal order, an element of cultural order, and an attribute of things; it also represents a relationship between all of these. Ambivalence has been consequently legitimated as objects of critical discussions not only from the psychologic perspective (Bleuler, 1950; Freud, 1983; Scott, 1968) but also from sociological and anthropological perspectives (Bauman, 1991; Berliner et al., 2016; Weigert, 1991). Ambivalence is a term that refers to a
Research settings
By the late 1880s, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos were all controlled by the French colonialists and collectively referred to as French Indochina. French Indochina was firstly formed in Vietnam in 1887 and lasted until 1954. Bà Nà Hills is one of hill stations founded and developed by the French colonialists. Constructing a vast, salubrious, relaxing, modern and luxury site of French villeggiatura on the highland of Vietnam was “the first and foremost a utopian fantasy” (Jennings, 2003, p. 162) for
Searching for authenticity
“If you want to visit and see the real hill stations constructed by the French, you should visit Bạch Mã. It is not that far from here. Bạch Mã hill stations show the real abandonment of colonial places. Bạch Mã is completely different from Bà Nà. Bà Nà is [a] victim of capitalism and tourism and Bạch Mã is really an authentic place [ …] please just remember that you will see only some stones, a part of walls and roof [ …] in Bạch Mã […] what you are seeing in French village of Bà Nà is all
Conclusion
Amid ambiguity, dissonance and tensions surrounding Bà Nà Hills in Vietnam, this article attempted to clarify and understand the ways in which ambivalence—as one of the basic human instincts—toward colonial history and places is exposed in touristic consumption. This study elucidated the ways in which ambivalent emotional subjectivities coexist by highlighting that tourists actively engage to criticise, negotiate, formulate, produce or appropriate the interactions between the ‘tripe quest’ of
Impact statement
This qualitative study can contribute to an understanding of ambivalence as a bridge between individual emotional experience and comprehensive social changes, as well as a valuable interpretive and analytic tool to understand the involvement and dispositive of individuals toward social transformation. The ways in which ambivalence toward postcolonial mimetic places is exposed in touristic consumption contribute to the close investigation of tourists’ authenticity negotiation which inextricably
Author contribution
Hyo Dan CHO was in charge of conceptualization, methodology, data collection & analysis, writing-reviewing and editing.
Declaration of competing interest
None.
Acknowledgments
I am most grateful to all anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments and suggestions. I would also like to express my sincere gratitude to Dr Sang T. Lim, Vice Provost and Mr Tae J. Bae, Dean of Duy Tan University, Vietnam.
Dr. Hyo Dan CHO is a Research Professor at the College of Hotel & Tourism Management of Kyung Hee University, Korea. She received her PhD from the University of Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, France. Her research interests include tourism discourses of self, other and place and interdisciplinary aspects of tourism.
References (131)
Tourism and hybridity : Re-Visiting bhabha's third space
Annals of Tourism Research
(2011)Sacred site experience : A phenomenological study
Annals of Tourism Research
(2009)Consuming colonial nostalgia in Kolkata, India
Annals of Tourism Research
(2022)- et al.
Representative dissonance : India's self and western image
Annals of Tourism Research
(2005) - et al.
Authenticity matters
Annals of Tourism Research
(2006) Material culture of post-colonial wildlife tourism
Annals of Tourism Research
(2013)- et al.
Negotiating authenticity : Three modernities
Annals of Tourism Research
(2021) - et al.
Closing the hermeneutic circle? Photographic encounters with the other
Annals of Tourism Research
(2008) - et al.
Tourism and decolonisation : Locating research and self
Annals of Tourism Research
(2015) Authenticity of the objectively authentic
Annals of Tourism Research
(2012)
Hybridity between the ‘self’ and the ‘other’ : Visiting gyeongju through the prism of colonial imaginary
Annals of Tourism Research
Authenticity and commoditization in tourism
Annals of Tourism Research
Authentication : Hot and cool
Annals of Tourism Research
The context of third world tourism marketing
Annals of Tourism Research
Viking heritage tourism : Authenticity and commodification
Annals of Tourism Research
Built heritage and colonial cities
Annals of Tourism Research
Postcolonial perspectives on colonial heritage tourism : The domestic tourist consumption of French heritage in Puducherry, India
Annals of Tourism Research
Authenticity perceptions in the Chinese marketplace
Journal of Business Research
Authenticity in tourism theory and experience. Practically indispensable and theoretically mischievous?
Annals of Tourism Research
Behavioral conceptualization of tourism and leisure
Annals of Tourism Research
Heritage and postmodern tourism
Annals of Tourism Research
Tourism and colonialism : The experience of the Bahamas
Annals of Tourism Research
Theorizing Other discourses of tourism, gender and culture : Can the subaltern speak (in tourism)?
Tourist Studies
Imaginaire du tourisme culturel
Imaginaire, tourisme et exotisme
The post-colonial studies reader
Jihad vs. McWorld
The precession of simulacra
Semiotexte
America
Simulacra and simulation
The consumer society : Myths and structures
Modernity and ambivalence
The social construction of reality : A treatise in the sociology of knowledge
Anthropology and the study of contradictions
Journal of Ethnographic Theory
Anthropology and the study of contradictions
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
Of mimicry and man : The ambivalence of colonial discourse
The Disciple: A Special Issue on Psychoanalysis
Signs taken for wonders : Questions of ambivalence and authority under a tree outside Delhi, may 1817
Critical Inquiry
The location of culture
Dementia praecox or the group of schizophrenias
Using thematic analysis in psychology
Qualitative Research in Psychology
Monumental ambivalence : The politics of heritage
Unstructured and semi-structured interviewing
Marketing as multiplex : Screening postmodernism
European Journal of Marketing
Abraham Lincoln as authentic reproduction : A critique of postmodernism
American Anthropologist
The white inuit speaks : Contamination as literary strategy
Mimicking virgins : Colonial ambivalence and the ancient romance
Arethusa
Ambivalent heritage : Between affect and ideology in a colonial cemetery
Journal of Material Culture
The impact of the postcolonial theories of Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, and Homi Bhabha on western thought : The third-world intellectual in the first-world academy
Provincializing Europe : Postcolonial thought and historical difference
Cited by (0)
Dr. Hyo Dan CHO is a Research Professor at the College of Hotel & Tourism Management of Kyung Hee University, Korea. She received her PhD from the University of Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, France. Her research interests include tourism discourses of self, other and place and interdisciplinary aspects of tourism.