“This tour was an exceptional surprise”: slavery heritage tourism and the embodied absence of the past”.

Description

Invited lecture to the MLT Research Seminar Series at the Lincoln International Business School, University of Lincoln, UK
Abstract: Across many European countries there is an ongoing struggle with telling the contentious stories of slavery and colonialisation. Tourism practices and performances can play a transformative role in this process of telling the stories of history and heritage. In this presentation I examine a slavery-related heritage tour: Black Heritage Amsterdam Tours (BHAT), using a framework that stresses the narrative power and transformative work of tourism in the politics of slavery heritage. BHAT is a guided walking, sightseeing and boat tour that explore Amsterdam to make visible the ‘hidden histories’ of the African Diaspora and colonial history of the Netherlands from the 17th-century history. The tour weaves around the Dam Square through to the historic De Wallen neighbourhood along some of Amsterdam’s oldest streets and buildings, and involves a stopover at the Rijksmuseum.

I start by developing the conceptual notion of the embodied absence of the past to refer to the physical presence but narrative absence of the shared history and role of people of African descent in European societies. I then focus on how tourism practices and performances such as the BHAT makes visible and challenges this embodied absence of the past. This study seeks to highlight the transformative work of tourism by exploring what visitors take away from their tour of slavery and colonial heritage in Amsterdam. Specifically, it examines visitors’ thoughts about the representation of Dutch slavery and colonial heritage during the tour and their views on the physical remnants of such heritage in the built environment. Data for this study comes from 147 visitor review comments posted on the travel website TripAdvisor under the BHAT page between April 2013 – August, 2020. A thematic analysis methodological approach is utilised in gaining an understanding of what visitors learn about Dutch slavery and colonial history during the tour. This study shows how the cultural imagination of slavery is negotiated in the context of the slavery heritage tourism practices seen as leisurely pursuit as well as seen as transformative memorial of the past.

Period	26 Jan 2022
Held at	University of Lincoln, United Kingdom
Degree of Recognition	International