From Publishers Weekly
Believing that the unexamined experience is not worth having, Lippard (The Lure of the Local) is a tourist with a problem: she can't relax. In this blend of cultural criticism and on-the-road dispatch, Lippard examines the links between tourism and exploitation. A chapter on "Tragic Tourism" investigates the attraction of "celebrity murder sites, concentration camps, massacre sites." Her conclusions are appropriately nuanced: on the one hand, monuments "inspire secondary memories that can color or even interfere with responses to the primary event"; on the other, "remembrance is the only way to compensate the dead." Lippard's critical lingo is sometimes clunky, but her willingness to implicate herself in her critique makes the book accessibly personal ("I am resigned to looking like a tourist wherever I go, even at home, because I'm always rubbernecking"). This tendency lends a depth and power to her interrogation of the ways that Anglo tourism has made Santa Fe into "Santa Fake," through the trivialization and commodification of native and hispano cultures. As Lippard admits, it was after repeated tourist visits that she decided to move to the area. But Lippard is always on guard against the placid acceptance of tourism, always aware of the ways it can be an egregious indulgence of the affluent who are transforming the world in their own image.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.
From Library Journal
Art critic Lippard (The Lure of the Local, New Pr., 1997) presents intriguing philosophical, historical, and sociological perspectives on tourists and tourism, from the conventional to the absurd. These thoughtful essays analyze the culture and motives of tourism from New Mexico to New York and from Texas to Maine and examine the attraction of certain destinations, sites, subjects, tours, museums (and other art), and modes of travel. What are visitors seekingAeducation, thrills, history (or its re-creation), status, nostalgia, multicultural exposure, identity? Are the sites real or mythologized? One of the most intriguing essays focuses on the popularity of places pertaining to tragedy or disaster, like Gianni Versace's mansion or the site of the Sand Creek Cheyenne-Arapaho massacre. Another highlight is a witty piece on trips to scenic overlooks, state parks, and the like. Most powerful, however, is the final essay on nostalgia, into which Lippard weaves her own personal history. Recommended for circulating libraries.ACarol J. Binkowski, Bloomfield, NJ
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.
