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ЛОКАЛЬНОЕ В ГЛОБАЛЬНОМ: ФОРМУЛА ТУРИЗМА
LOCAL IN GLOBAL FORMULA FOR TOURISM
Maximiliano E. KORSTANJEa, udc 368:338.48
Ge0ffrey R. SKOLLb DOI: 10.22412/1995-0411-2017-11-1-7-17
a University of Palermo (Buenos Aires, Argentina); PhD, Professor; e-mail: [email protected], [email protected] b Buffalo State College the State University of New York (Buffalo, New York, USA); PhD, Associate Professor; e-mail: [email protected], [email protected]
EXPLORING THE ARCHETYPE OF AMERICANESS AND THE EXCEMPLARY PRINCIPLE: THE FEAR OF TRAVELING ABROAD
Following a general introduction of colonialism, this essay reflects on the growth of US imperialism. It notes that colonialist exploitation depends on a pervasive ethnocentrism in which the metropolis is depicted as morally and culturally superior to the colonized. An example of travel writing is used to examine and appreciate this ethnocentric discourse. Precisely because travel literature is not written as a racist or ethnocentric polemic, it is useful in coming to understand the implicit value system and ethos that forms the foundation of colonial ethnocentrism. In the particular example, the colonial ethnocentrism is linked to the ideology of American exceptionalism which has deep roots in the American Puritan tradition.
Keywords: American exceptionalism, colonialism, culture, ethnocentrism, literature, tourism, travel.
Introduction. The attacks to Paris occurred in November 13 of 2015 shows sadly two previous assumptions. The impossibility to control leisure industries as cultural entertainment, museums and tourism, conjoined to the fact that terrorists have selected travelers over recent years as their primary targets. Some voices claim that terrorism and colonial order were historically interlinked. Let's explain that colonization in past centuries was supported by an ideology of the colonized Other. Bullets kill people, but words indoctrinate their minds. Edward Said has developed a model for understanding the pervasive nature of European ethnocentrism in novelists such as Joseph Conrad who portrayed the cultural values of the empire [35]. Empires have expanded their influences in the world by imposing an ecumene of exemplarity in which the periphery accepts European superiority. Beyond this center, the interaction between Europeans and non-Europeans engendered what Turner-Bushnell and Green [41] call a sphere of influence. These borderlands were flexible, and they were continually negotiated. The connection between imperialism and literature has been
widely studied in such seminal texts as Rule of Darkness [2], The Theory of the Novel [27], The British Image of India [14], Imperial Eyes [33], and Culture and Imperialism [35]. This essay focuses on the role played by American ethnocentrism in the modern travel books such as in Charles Robert Temple's American Abroad [39]. Temple's book sets forth the perspective of Americans looking outward. Today, it shows the basis for an American outlook on the post-9/11 world which combines American exceptionalism with a pervasive fear. One of the aspects that differentiate American from British ethnocentrism is the sentiment of exceptionalism with respect to Others. In the United States Americanness is lived as a superior allegory to be applied to the world for making it a safer and better home for humankind [9, 11, 36, 45]. Though the lens of this essay review we understand how the Other is constructed by privileged American citizens in view of their expectations, hopes, and fears.
Preliminary debate
The habits of travelling are common sense to all cultures of the globe. Many theories have been developed thanks to the
experiences and stories derived from these practices. In his book on America, François-René de Chateaubriand (1768-1848) says there were two types of travellers: those who go by land and those who go by sea. Many discoveries that today sheds light on our geographies, derived from travellers' courage to go beyond the boundaries of their respective civilizations [7]. One of the main problems in understanding the potential power of travel writing depends on the attention this genre receives from generation to generation. Travels activate social imaginaries which follow imperial interests, along with landscapes and cultural encounters. Citing K. Oberg, Rachel Irwin [20, 31] alludes to the encounter among ethnicities as a culture shock, which ranges from a stage of understanding to a profound crisis - honeymoon, crisis, recovery and adjustment. While tourists generally are embedded in a honeymoon phase, the native Other is imagined as a polite and gorgeous friend. Explorers, anthropologists, and aid-workers face another, more disappointing facet. A radical crisis of identity may take some months. When this arrives, the foreigner has serious problems in coping with natives. Depending on how this is resolved, the visitor will return to home or stay. The process of recovery consists in the assimilation of all information, customs, and practices to survive in this new society. After this stage, the adjustment will take place. Depending on how the guests are negotiating with natives, their knowledge has further value for others. Tourists, for example are subject to peripheral and superficial encounters with natives while anthropologists produce another kind of knowledge.
The American economist, Robert LHeilbroner days that imperialism as a project was inextricably intertwined with capitalism. He claims that three key factors were important to consolidate European conquests: the impetus for discovery; second, the decline of religion; and third, rise of science [16]. One of the disciplines that encouraged the quests for knowledge about non-Europeans and drawing on the methods of classical positivistic social sciences, anthropology emphasized the
importance of direct observation of observed peoples. Two main assumptions inspired these new forms of making science. The first was the belief that people lie or simply sometimes do not recognize their drives and behaviour. Researchers are obliged to be there, contrasting the speech with nonverbal practices. The first anthropologists who launched the study of exotic peoples were involuntarily manipulated by governors or officials who read their ethnologies with the aim of more effective control of native peoples [1, 5, 23, 24, 33, 40, 32). The production of knowledge, imperialism, and travels became intertwined. Novels, and guidebooks have been historically employed as ideological instruments of indoctrination whose efficiency rests on what they cover, not what they overtly describe.
Mary L. Pratt [33] explores the imperialistic discourses to understand how the identities of Others are created. The dominated group interprets its inferiority in favour of dominators. The literature of travels as well as travel itself is of paramount importance to create an archetype of Europeanness. The conflicting encounters flourish in zones of contact where a real process of acculturation surfaces. The ideology of dominators, as Adam in the paradise, marks the Others, while it keeps itself unmarked - that is, the standard by which others are judged. The passion for travels and discoveries starts with Carl Linnaeus (1707-78) who in 1735 published his book Systema Naturae (system of nature/ This project encouraged many natural historians, or as they are called today natural scientists to classify biological species in the world to create an all encompassing system that explains the diversity of plants. Following this classificatory system, the first scientific travels were oriented to describe customs, cultures, and any other aspect of peoples who Europeans thought merited attention. In this way and right from the first, the new disciplines of social science abetted colonialism to expand European control over the globe, and in so doing portrayed the Other as non-white and an irrational actor who needed to be civilized. In Western ethnocentric ideology, cultural values not
only were both necessary and beneficial for indigenes. Literature and travel writings, Pratt adds, encouraged the imperial values everywhere, paving the way for the advance of an ideological colonization that strengthened the bond between the center and its periphery. Literature offers visualizations and symbolic landscapes where the colonial order is sustained by a moral supremacy of Western culture. The subordinated role of aboriginal life, compared to that of Europe, was one among many other rhetoric devices to create a sentiment of superiority of white writers throughout the colonial world.
Modern tourism scholars have studied the stereotypes of colonialism [4, 5, 6, 28]. In one of the books on this theme, Traversing Paris, Charlie Mansfied [28] seeks the re-definition travel writing as a genre of literature by means of descriptions of the narratives, projections, expectations, and experiences in travels. This French custom, initiated by the Encyclopédist Denis Diderot (1713-84), reveals the potentialities of a journey to decode the convergence between the autobiography and social conjuncture. The episteme for travels elevates the agency of travelers who reify the same observed reality. The tension between objectivity and subjectivity certainly opens a complex door in travel writing as a scientific genre. The body of a travel writer is necessarily circumscribed by specific time and place, which blurs the boundaries between the lived time of journey and the text. Concerning the contributions of the reactionary royalist and founder of Romanticism in France, François-René, de Chateaubriand (17681848), Mansfield indicates that texts work similarly to a souvenir, because like a souvenir they are strongly associated with the identity of tourists. As a souvenir is linked to a wider sentiment of nostalgia, Mansfield leads readers to an under-explored argument: the souvenir works as a mechanism of return transforming the physical distance into emotional proximity. Travel writing comprises a creative praxis by closing the hermeneutical circle between those events we experience on a daily basis and the individual emotional background, and thereby becomes an episteme in the
Foucauldian sense. Mansfield's argument leads to the three elements of discovery travels which are rooted in the modern science: 1) the need to monitor the world to ensure Western control, 2) intellectual appropriation that interprets events to generate knowledge, and 3) support for the capitalist mode of production. All these elements are replicated and renegotiated in the travels.
Laura Rascaroli [34] has called attention to the tension between pleasure and displeasure in traveling. The latter signals unproductive displacement that destroys the self, and the latter leads the traveler to the materialization of hedonism. The focus of Rascoli argument is on how identity is constructed. In the past, France originally drew from southern Mediterranean culture, but today this logic has been upended. This explains the bifurcation of symbolic (soft) and legal (hard) borders. Florian Grandena [13] argues that striated space (i.e., space with legal borders) is determined by states but nomadic spaces exist as a response to the growth of social frustration, or perhaps ennui. Probably the exemplary nomadic book is Jack Kerouac's On the Road [22]. Based on a romantic gaze, a nomad-tourist not only breaks out of the capitalist network but seeks to negotiate his/ her identity strolling throughout the nation, something that recalls Walter Benjamin's flâneur (Buck-Morss [3]/ Ewa Mazierska [29] explores the epistemology of past travels to criticize the contemporary social fabric. Mazierska reviews scholarly literature that points to tourism as a hedonistic industry, but she notes, as in cinema or many other products of the culture industry, there are many ways of exploring visited spaces. The role of travelers and their proximity to the Other are of utmost importance in judging whether tourism is good or bad for society. What is important is not whether the traveler is a tourist or a migrant, but how that travel initiates the process of discovery. She acknowledges that while some doors are open, like the tourism and leisure travels, others are inevitably closed. The past not only facilitates a break in today's ideological discourse, but unravels it into the complexity of nationhood [29, p. 123].
In recent years the industrial world seems to be more concerned for the securitization of identity and mobility than by other questions. Korstanje & Olsen [26] have examined the genre of horror movies to consider that 9/11 has not only created a serious shock to American culture, but also changed the ways of making terror in cinema. Based on an examination of movies such as Hills Have Eyes, Hostel, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Korstanje and Olsen argue that American movie culture exhibits a combination of pride and fear. While American tourists are viewed as the epitome of good civilization, their own cultural products are compromised of sadists whose main satisfaction is the torture of innocents. The principle of evil seems to be combined with a lack of hospitality. The world beyond the boundaries of the United States is presented as a dangerous place to visit. This leads to the creation of deep-seated ethnocentrism that audiences cannot see with clarity, but which affects how the Other, non-American is reconstructed. The concept of risk and terrorism as it is being exploited by Hollywood may instill serious problems in the collective psyche of United States.
The sentiment of exceptionalism into Americanness
Max Weber noted the connection between religion and labor. He acknowledged that certain Protestant and Catholic's cosmologies constructed different models of the world and labor. While Calvinism was based on predestination - that is, a closed future, Catholicism saw salvation as a prerequisite for the present acts. For Calvinistic temperaments, the salvation of individuals was already determined by a book of life in Heaven. Catholicism, in contrast taught that salvation was a consequence of acts on earth [42-44]. Weber made a connection between the concepts of religious salvation and the economy. The organization of labor as well as the process of territorization follows cultural archetypes which put limits on authority and requires the production of a surplus. Calvinism taught that humans were stewards of the earth who were expected to produce more during their lifetimes than they found at birth. The political structure depending on how this
surplus was created. S. Coleman argues that American fundamentalist religious culture is linked to a much broader association between the religious and political order. Those orders, religious and political, are charged with reforming the world, and since it is a dangerous place, the sins of the world should be expiated by sacrifice, and renovated by means of grace and fear. Americans and other Anglophones, especially those in Britain and the settler countries, Australia and Canada, have produced a culture of terror. That culture induces a generalized fear among the populations of those countries. With a focus on the United States, the ruling class has constructed a culture of fear that has evolved from the kind of fear associated with the anticommunist hysteria in the years following the Second World War and its predecessor Red scares to its current incarnation of the terrorism obsession [37, 38]. While recognizing popular participation in constructing this culture of fear, the fact is that elites in the centers of world capitalism have fostered its construction with planning and deliberation. The culture of fear is conducive in keeping class conflict in America and the world under control.
Unlike Spain that relied more on military conquest to colonize the Americas, English colonization was centered on settlements and trade. The English reserved its right for intervening in the autonomy of indigenous peoples, and recognized a degree of indigenous autonomy. The Spanish approach derived from a different economic strategy -that is, Spain's colonialism was extractive, whereas England's was based on agricultural exploitation. The English control over the indigenous peoples was based on discursive abilities to proclaim the racial superiority of Anglo order over other ethnicities [15]. As Richard Hofstadter put it, this sentiment of exemplarity was reinforced by the adoption of social Darwinism at the same time that the US was becoming a colonial power in its own right in the late nineteenth century. The survival of the fittest associated with the virtue of race reinforced an America-centrism [17].
Hofstadter [17] said that one of the primary aspects used to rationalize competition among entrepreneurs in US was the adoption of social Darwinism as espoused
in works by such social theorists as William Graham Sumner and Herbert Spencer. Social Darwinism, unlike Darwin's own biological theory of natural selection and speciation, postulated two significant axioms which reinforced the sentiment of exceptionalism, which itself came from the Puritan tradition in New England [11]. Social Darwinism was based on survival of fittest and social determinism. Hofstadter argues that the legitimacy of law to ensure the equality of all citizens was not sufficient to explain why some actors had success while others fail. As a supra-organism, the social structure overrides the interpretation of law. To evolve to a higher stage, society should accept the struggle for survival as the primary cultural value. In this view, social advance depends on the wealth one generation can pass to the next. Accordingly, "primitive man, who long ago withdrew from the competitive struggle and ceased to accumulate capital goods, must pay with a backward and unenlightened way of life" [17, p. 58]. Therefore, millionaires are not the result of greed, but natural selection. They have been selected by their strength, tested in their success in business and their abilities to adapt to the competitive environment. Those who are not wealthy are simply less fit. A political consequence of this line of thought is that states should not promote charity as a governmental policy; if this happens it runs the risks of general social decline. The society should be recycled allowing the big fish eats the small fish. At a closer look, Calvinist and other protestant circle emphasized on the hostility of the environment as a proof of faith. The foundation for this amalgam comes from the New England Calvinist ideology, of which Jonathan Edwards 1741 sermon Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God is exemplary [30]. There, Edwards, spelled out the Calvinist notion of predestination, which, among other things held that only those that God chose would enter Heaven, and everyone else was doomed to Hell. Those so chosen could be identified by their prosperity. The social Darwinism of the latter nineteenth century was annealed to the underlying Calvinist doctrine of hard of individual salvation, stewardship, and prosperity as a sign of moral superiority.
In the early republic, up to the Civil War (1861-65), so-called nativism in the United States showed considerable resistance to new comers, such as the Irish fleeing the famine of the 1840s and somewhat less toward Germans and some other nationalities fleeing the counter revolution and political repressions of the European rebellions of 1848. Nativism often combined with anti-Catholicism, which in turn combined with the racism of the South and its institutionalized racialization of slavery. The racial discrimination as well as its practices constructed a barrier between the community and this undesired guests [21]. Underneath it all lay economic exploitation of new European immigrants and African American slaves. At the same time, the US carried out its long term genocide of the North American Indians. Eric Cheyfitz explained that empires construct a subordinated image of Other, who never can never be equal to the elite. Ranging from ridiculing to demonization, the others are often portrayed as inferior, or uncivilized. Imperial discourse consists in disciplining this Other - African American slaves and their descendents, recent European immigrants, and native North Americans - to make them decent citizens [8]. In practice that came to mean becoming White [19].
Despite the cognitive dissonance in the midst of genocide and racial and ethnic exploitation, the ideological apparatuses of the United States developed its image as an exemplary center, or city on a hill, as the Puritan settlers saw it. It is this image, rather than the reality of social relations, that leads this country to proclaim itself as unique, an exception, and beyond the restraints of the rest of the world. For a recent example of this exceptionalist discourse, Michael Ignatieff, a Canadian political leader who is currently on the Harvard faculty, maintains that the United States has historically constructed a social bond based on the respect and trust in civic institutions. Americans, according to Ignatieff, valorize the freedom of speech and democracy along with the equality of opportunity in a framework of rights and duties as citizens. The concept of human rights, perhaps most explicitly realized in the universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was promulgated under the leadership of Eleanor Roosevelt
after the Second World War, combined with the concept of American exceptionalism to spread American ideals of liberty to the rest of the world. From the American exceptionalist perspective, the United States was the premier, if not the only country, which can, for instance, repeatedly reject resolutions of United Nations General Assembly, as it has done many times with respect to Palestine and Israel. Many American politicians feel they have been excused from accusations of human right violations [18]. Following this argument, M. Korstanje explains that the principle of exception that characterized the early political life in the United States, not only was ingrained with its religious matrix, but also paved the ways for the liberal democracy to betray its own foundations. This kind of exceptionalist ideology has been coupled with a disregard for other nations' sovereignty as the United States has intervened in countries throughout the world to overthrow their governments. The tactics vary from propaganda, to influxes of money to opposition groups, to covertly organizing coups d'état, and outright invasions. Since the Second World War, the United States has acted more like an empire than an exemplar, despite official and public protestations to the contrary [25].
Understanding how such disparate conceptions - on the one hand an exemplar of liberty and self-determination and on the other, imperial aggression and domination -presents an intellectual challenge. As a literary form, travel writing offers fertile ground to approach an understanding of how ethnocentrism works to maintain these contradictory images. In literature imagined landscapes of travelers are written from the center to impose a specific message over the periphery. In next section, we examine the book entitled Americans Abroad by the travel writer Charles Robert Temple. This book represents an effort to advise Americans who travel or work abroad about the dangers of the world. A clear diagnosis of how American imperialism works can be done if you pay attention to this now relatively obscure text.
Americans Abroad
Charles R. Temple was fluent in six languages. He worked in many countries since
he left Yale University in US, some of them with diverse cultures and customs. Concerned on the psychology of tourists, he published in 1961 the book Americans Abroad to explain the different and radical shifts suffered by Americans when have to travel or work abroad. This book gives practical suggestions on travel, and by doing so presents a clear picture of American ethnocentrism.
After the Second World War ended in 1945, the United States stood alone among the former belligerents as unscathed in its own territory. The closest the country came to devastation was the attack on Pearl Harbor, in what was then a mere territory, and far from the mainland of the metropole. Not only was its territory intact, it was the center of the world's economy. With the growth of a middle income tier of US society, many Americans started to travel worldwide as tourists, businessmen, diplomats, and so forth. In doing so, these citizens represent America to the world. In Temple's view, one of the aspects that make Americans exemplary is democracy: "Turning up in every part of the globe, these Americans are our informal representative to the other peoples of the world. What we are and what our democracy means will be judged by their action and reaction long after the formal speeches and actions of politicians have been forgotten. This was not always so, and once John Doe, an American living in a foreign country, might have been looked upon by the people about him as just another foreigner, with little or no reference to his national background" (p. 8).
For Temple like many other Americans, democracy is lived as a positive cultural legacy that the United States can leave to the civilized world. But for that, its travelers should demonstrate a special virtue which only is given to select people. The United States, in Temple's argument, should not be judged by its failure or success in international relations, instead the country should be appraised by its tourists' behavior. This means that American tourists serve as symbolic ambassadors of their country. Temple's book is filled with examples and situations aimed to show the civil virtue of what being a good American means. One of
the first obstacles to overcome abroad is the language. Temple acknowledges that some Americans are reluctant to learn languages other than English. He points out that fluency in another language allows the learning of other customs, and opens the horizon to new opportunities for business. For Temple, the American Way is bound up with the role played by money. The degree of materiality, as Weber put it, depends on the need to demonstrate to be part of the select. Temple is concerned for those compatriots who have not devoted time to have experiences with the Other. The quest for novelty seems is linked to overcoming the prejudices of home.
In this vein, Temple writes
"there are certain fundamental experiences which have to be met by everyone who leaves his own country to live elsewhere. Going abroad means giving up home in spiritual a well as physical sense; it means acquiring a new kind of education; it means adopting new attitudes and points of view about foreigners and their ways; it means assessing one's own values in light of other's people's value and standards" (p. 15).
All this advice was given to those Americans who opted to live in other countries for a prolonged stay out of their home. Temple has somewhat different advice for tourists.
Typically, moved by curiosity, tourists are fascinated by experiences abroad. They need to see how life is lived in foreign countries. Poor countries, many of them with markedly undemocratic cultures, have developed systems where the majority is excluded from political life. This results in serious asymmetries that lead people to poverty. Being poor is an effect of rejecting democratic politics. Therefore, according to Temple, Americans should feel proud of their economic supremacy. If the civilized citizens reserve their right to travel long distances as a sign of wealth, it is no less true is that this act has a serious risk. In this vein, Temple writes, "slumming is neither possible nor intelligent. As Americans, living in a technically advanced, affluent society, we tend to downgrade those peoples
of the world who have not participated in the industrial revolution and whose economies are inadequate to their population's needs" (p. 21). This happens because the United States had vast lands and a rich economy that flourished with an internal, domestic industry that provided a continuous chain of production and consumption, a huge internal market for what was produced in America. The sense of Americanness is exhibited by Temple as an archetype of science, hard work, and recreation; always contrasting the difference between the White Anglo model and aboriginals in other countries. Of course, Temple ignores or tries to ignore the many aboriginal reservoirs that continue to coexist with his model White Anglo American citizen. He ignores the urban ghettos, depressed and marginalized small towns and stretches of rural poverty. Secondly, the book assumes that the United States is the most democratic country on the planet. Temple does not ask if the United States is democratic, but instead asks why it is the most democratic country in the world. In the chapter entitled, "Special Luggage Labeled American", Temple recognizes that democracy is not a perfect system of government, and notes that foreigners may say that judges can be bribed or the activities of some minorities are restricted, but he replies that in the United States "most judges can't be bribed, few men sell their votes; the majority of Americans reject attempts to limit minority rights; and while a poor man may rarely lunch with a rich one, both can do pretty much what they like otherwise (p. 30).
What this excerpt does not take into consideration is hundreds of years of ethnic discrimination, the repression of the black population and the ghettoization of most cities as well as internal riots between blacks and whites. It is not the goal of this paper to judge if America is good or bad, but only to focus on the cultural elements that form Americannes as an archetype of identity. Today, few citizens in the United States have read Temple's book, but even so its value is that it reflects the imaginary of how America sees itself and the others. For that reason, it is like an artifact that reveals in microcosm the
American ethos and its connection to feelings about strangers.
When traveling as tourists for recreational purposes, Temple adds, Americans should understand that the visited lands are not populated "entirely" by barbarians (p. 115). To know more about exotic countries, they have to read magazines or other publications to learn the experience of other travelers, and to become aware of which place is safer or dangerous as well as the things they can and cannot do. Traveling can be conceptualized as an art, where the subject develops new abilities to deal with transportation, new customs, hostile migration officials, and other problems. Readers should follow Temple s steps to achieve a successful adaptation in other cultures.
On the surface, the primary concern of this book is the implicit view that the world seems to be a hostile place. Thus, knowledge and know how facilitate the symbolic resources to mitigate the lapses of anxieties such as the validation of passport at migration office. Guide books are of paramount importance so as to be familiar with the visited destinations. A coherent interpretation of the tourist originating country should be kept in mind at time of purchasing the ticket. Temple gives the example of a friend who traveled to Beirut buying his ticket in Israel and was rejected upon arrival as he was accused of being Zionist spy.
Temple's use of such terms as "entirely barbarian" appear ethnocentric because it assumes the foreigners live in uncivilized cultures. Also, his perspective is from the nation of travelers like Israel, the United States or Britain as the point of sale of the ticket can and should determine how dangerous the final destination may be. If Americans go to a destination whose government has a relationship with the United States, the possibility of some kind of adverse treatment might occur to a traveler. This opens the question of the relationship between safety and security. Being American abroad means privilege because Americans carry with them a symbolic reminder of US supremacy over the world. Today, in large part because of the US led global war on terror, it also raises the specter of terrorist attacks arising from resentment on the part of dominated people.
These two elements, American privilege and Americans as terrorist targets, are present in the Anglo-American archetype promoted by tourism related industries.
Temple's book contains many examples of people who have traveled to Europe, Latin America, and Asia. Being American means superiority over other ethnicities due high income relative to people in other countries. Of course, this is far less true today than in 1961 when Temple wrote the book. Also, Temple assumes that because Americans are educated in a civilized culture where the respect for the Other symbolizes the tenets of democracy, it means that Americans are willing to learn about other cultures. However, this way of constructing the Other leads to a bipolar logic where the 'we' is superior to the 'they'. To be part of an elite, selected for salvation, brings serious problems for American tourists as symbolic representatives of the United States. Of course, American tourists are not responsible for the policies followed by US, except when they are so designated such as officials in the US State Department. Nevertheless the Anglo-American ethnocentric discourse upends the connection of cause and consequences, conferring the burden on tourists. This can be seen in current guide books which present the Middle East as a dangerous destination for Americans. Tourists become involuntarily ambassadors of their own state. It is important not to lose sight that this ethnocentric discourse was not created by 9/11, it was present long before this event, but to some extent 9/11 closed the hermeneutic circle between a frightened American citizen and the way to construct Otherness. At the time of 9/11, US President George W. Bush encouraged Americans to confine their travels to the domestic US and at the same time he militarized US borders and restricted migrants as undesired guests.
To understand this pervasive logic, one must understand two relevant aspects of ethnocentrism. On one hand it promotes the exemplary nature of one group or ethnicity over the rest. The limits of uniqueness determine an exclusionary circle of belonging, which is symbolically justified by certain fabricated virtues. Valorizing American tourists is a subtle way of accepting the hegemony of the United States and its democracy in the world.
However, in the dialectic of ethnocentrism, being part of the elite has its costs. Whenever Americans cross the borders of their country, many risks are posed in their trips, from a terrorist attack to a crime, destinations are classified according to the importance of Americaness and their safety.
Moreover ethnocentric discourse neglects the importance of the Other except through the lens of one's own culture. It poses Americans as the most desirable of tourists. It reminiscent of horror movies like Hostel I and II where American tourists were captured and tortured by a criminal network operating in Eastern Europe. Millionaires paid huge fees to torture a tourist. Hostel's dialogues not only portrays the world as hostile, but also convinces the audience that victims' value depended on their nationality. Mass entertainment such as horror movies often depicts Eastern Europe or rural zones as hostile and dangerous destinations for civilized tourists. The same sentiment of exceptionalism that leads Americans to be proud of their civilization instills terror when they have to leave home.
Conclusion. Literature has often served as an ideological mechanism of power for the center to exert hegemony over periphery. Substantial studies have shed their light on this slippery matter. However, the problem of imperialism seems not to be limited to literature alone. Other texts such as guidebooks or travel writing, construct a biased landscape of the world. This is the case in the example use in this essay, Temple's Americans Abroad. Though lacking in overtly discriminatory or racial considerations, Temple does his text covers what in our consideration is one of the tenets of Anglo-American ethnocentrism, the sentiment of exception. Temple diagnosis is that the world is stereotyped as a dichotomy between dangerous and safe. It appeals to America as the cradle of democracy, civilization, and legal order. In view of this, Americans never should lose sight that they are ambassadors of their superior culture. Even if the enemies of democracy want to attack Americans wherever they are, this should not stop Americans from showing that they are inhabitants of a city on a hill.
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КОРСТАНЬЕ Максимилиано Эмануэль3, СКОЛЛ Джеффри Р.6
а Университет Палермо (Буэнос-Айрес, Аргентина); доктор философии (PhD), профессор; e-mail: [email protected], [email protected]; б Государственный колледж Буффало, Университет штата Нью-Йорк (Буффало, штат Нью-Йорк, США); доктор философии (PhD), доцент; e-mail: [email protected], [email protected]
ИССЛЕДОВАНИЕ ОСНОВНЫХ ПРИНЦИПОВ АРХЕТИПА АМЕРИКАНИЗМА: СТРАХ ВЫЕЗДА ЗА ГРАНИЦУ
Статья посвящена вопросам изучения американского «взгляда на мир» через призму нарративной литературы. По мнению автора, в основе этого «взгляда» лежит американский этноцентризм, базирующийся на американской исключительности и одновременно всепроникающем страхе того, что находится за пределами привычного типичному американцу мира.
Автор приводит обзор источников, посвящённых проблемам феномена современного туризма как элемента массовой культуры, как системы взаимодействия туристов и местного населения, а также как продолжения расширения новых форм европейского империализма, в том числе и посредством индустрии туризма и гостеприимства. Основываясь на этой научной платформе, автор раскрывает корни сложившихся традиций взаимоотношений путешественников и местных жителей, которые, по его мнению, кроются в истории европейского, а позже — американского колониализма. Сегодня эти традиции приводят к печальным последствиям - таким, как возрастание межэтнической напряжённости, терроризму, направленному в последнее время преимущественно на туристов. Согласно мнению автора и его предыдущим исследованиям американской массовой культуры, элементом которой является массовый туризм, все это породило культуру террора. Эта культура индуцирует обобщенный страх среди населения англоязычных стран (таких как США, Канада, Австралия, Великобритания), поддерживая эти противоречивые образы: с одной стороны - свободы и самоопределения, а с другой - имперской агрессии и господства. Все это заставляет автора анализировать истоки и современный архетип американизма применительно к туристской сфере. Литература всегда служила идеологическим механизмом влияния власти центра на периферию. Особенное место в ней занимают путевые записки, дневники и эссе, путеводители, содержащие нарратив как отражение субъективной реальности. Сквозь подобную литературу можно взглянуть на мир глазами путешественника, писавшего её на основе своего чувственного опыта и своей собственной системы ценностей. При этом путешественник выступает как бы «послом» своей страны, её типичным представителем. Поэтому автор предпринимает попытку «посмотреть» на мир глазами типичного американца с помощью книги Чарльза Роберта Темпла «Американцы за рубежом» (1961). Этот типичный образец литературы для путешествующих за границу, своеобразный путеводитель именно для американцев, раскрывает базовые постулаты «американского взгляда на мир». В этой книге Темпл дает множество советов, как американцу следует себя вести за пределами своей страны, как преодолевать трудности и пр. Книга наполнена примерами и ситуациями, направленными на то, как американцу явить миру гражданскую добродетель, что значит быть хорошим американцем, представителем «колыбели демократии, цивилизации и правового порядка». При этом книга подчеркивает американскую исключительность, привилегированность по отношению к другим: её автор использует термины «истинный варвар» в отношении коренных народов других стран, экспонирует чувство американизма как архетип науки, упорного труда и отдыха; всегда подчеркивая разницу между моделью белого англосакса и аборигенами в других странах.
Туристы становятся непроизвольно послами своего собственного государства. Важно не упускать из виду, что этот этноцентричный дискурс не был создан после событий 9 сентября 2001 г., он написан задолго до этого события, но в какой-то степени оно замкнуло круг между «испуганным американским гражданином» и конструированием образа «другого».
Ключевые слова: американская исключительность, колониализм, культура, этноцентризм, литература, туризм, путешествия.
Корстанье М.Э., Сколл Д.Р. Исследование основных принципов архетипа американизма: страх выезда за границу // Современные проблемы сервиса и туризма. 2017. Т. 11. № 1. С. 7-17.
DOI: 10.22412/1995-0411-2017-11-1-7-17. Дата поступления статьи: 01 мая 2016 г.
Korstanje, M.E., & Skoll, G.R. (2017). Exploring the archetype of Americaness and the excemplary principle: the fear of traveling abroad. Sovremennye problemy servisa i turizma [Service and Tourism: Current Challenges], 11(1), 7-17. doi: 10.22412/1995-0411-2017-11-1-7-17.
Received May 1, 2016.
