Chapter 7: The Paradigmatic Tourist

In the Western thought tradition, the tourist has not been a subject worthy of intellectual musings and philosophical deliberations. Indeed, the tourist has been portrayed in primarily derisive ways. Nietzsche’s remark, “Tourists—they climb mountains like animals, stupid and perspiring, no one has told them that there are beautiful views on the way,” epitomizes the dominant attitude. Why does the figure of the tourist elicit such negative reactions? Do the sentiments perhaps imply something else, or is the tourist a doppelgänger, not anomalous or marginal but normative—a paradigmatic figure? If so, then what can be said of the poetics and politics of the tourist conceptualized as a paradigmatic subject?