Let me just show how you looked to us. You came. You took things that were not yours, and you did not, even for appearance’s sake, ask first. You could have said ’May I have this, please?’ and even though it would have been clear to everybody that a yes or no from us would have been of no consequence, you might have looked so much better. Believe me, it would have gone a long way. I would have had to admit that at least you were polite.673
669 Drabisnki 2013, 11; see also Hand 2008 670 LevinasT&I 1969, 109.
671 Parry 2004, 23; Hiddelston 2009, 162. 672 Rosello 2001, 18.
This is how Jamaica Kincaid explains Western colonialism’s and imperial- ism’s connections to the modern tourism industries in The Small Place. One of the many shared elements of colonialism, global tourism and development is the mobility where ‘West visits the rest’ and ‘cores visit the peripheries’, which makes it essential to acknowledge the postcolonial discourses in the theories and practices of tourism and development.674 In postcolonial
debates the desire to arrive and help the other in the previously colonized countries is typically referred to as the ’white man’s burden’. The idea was originally based on the ’backwardness’ of the colonized and the position of the colonizer at the top of the evolutionary ladder.675 Hence ’the white man’s
burden’ was seen as a duty to fix the colonized in a perpetual otherness.676
However, later on, the white man’s burden – and also the ’white tourist’s burden’ – have been interpreted as the guilty conscience for the past and present exploitation of the ‘other’ which takes place in the world. As Vrasti677
writes about volunteer tourism, carrying the white man’s, woman’s and tourist’s burden is normally perceived as an admirable sign of unselfishness that demands applause.
Ultimately global tourism and development interventions – and especially the search for emancipatory solutions that bring progress – are based on the hegemonic discourses whereby self helps and guides and rescues the other. In these discourses the ‘North’ and the ‘cores’ maintain the position of superiority, agency and the role of an adult, while the child-like ‘South’ and ‘peripheries’ are taught and helped to follow linear, Western-style development as the norm.678 Despite the call for multiculturalism and
acknowledgement of local knowledges, the problems and challenges are continuously found in ‘peripheries’, while the visitors from the ‘cores’ are perceived to be capable of providing the needed solutions. This mind-set allows subjects from the West and industrialized cores to be conserved. Here it merits to mention that the same kinds of unequal power relations tend to 674 See also McEwan 2009; Tosun 2005, 346.
675 Eriksson-Baaz, 2005, 37. 676 Ibid. 45; Bhabha 1994. 677 Vrasti 2013, 4.
exist between ‘cores’ and ‘peripheries’ within countries in the Global South. Kuokkanen’s679 work on universities’ hospitality towards indigenous people
and indigenous epistemes highlights the existence of ‘internal colonialism’ even within what has become known as the Global North.680
Sandra Talpande Mohanty681 argues that the Western feminists who
wish to ‘save the poor sisters in the South’ might also be repeating the same kinds of contradictory interventions as the ‘burdened white men’. Feminist postcolonial writers in particular have posed the questions of how to de- colonize the mind, and for whom this decolonizing is relevant.682 Kincaid’s
narrative above reveals the need for new tools which can help to acknowledge and interrupt impolite or unethical behaviour when visiting other people’s islands. What I suggest here is that taking for granted the welcome of the other (subjective genitive) is a sign of a colonized imagination, mentality and heightened levels of individualism. The first step in the process of ‘de- colonizing minds’ is to become aware of the ways and the contexts where such perceptions continue to be produced.
The asymmetry of intersubjective encounters becomes evident when the subjects are located in a particular topography and time; or when they are located, as the feminist, postcolonial scholars Ahmed and Spivak locate them, in a gendered body. Although these asymmetries are expected to be in constant change, depending on the contexts and subjects that are encountered, not all subjects have the same possibilities to mitigate these asymmetries.683 Especially scholars in the field of subaltern studies focus
attention on the subaltern subject position, which has no access to the lines of social mobility or to the processes of cultural imperialism.684 Rather,
subaltern subjects are those rendered voiceless and without agency by their social status.685 Spivak points this out in her now-famous question, ’can the 679 Kuokkanen 2007.
680 For discussions on internal colonialism, see Mignolo (2008), Dussel (2013), Ranta (2014). 681 Mohanty, 1999.
682 McLeod 2010, 206; Mohanty 1999.
683 Veijola 1997; Ronkainen 1999; Jokinen & Veijola 2012. 684 Mignolo 2012.
subaltern speak?’.686 This question calls for reflection on how the existing
asymmetries might be re-constructed and maintained in the intersubjective relations between self and the subaltern other.
Subjectivities are not formed only in physical encounters with the other, but also through representations that are used to describe our encounters with the other.687 In her analysis of the subaltern speech in tourism, Cara
Aithcinson688 calls attention to representations where ’the people in these
landscapes (in ’tropical paradises’) are frequently portrayed as passive but graceful recipients of white explorers from urbanized and industrialized countries’. However, the ethico-political implications of these kinds of representations are regularly dismissed even in the discourses of ethical tourism. Instead, concerns over practices that silence and de-subjectify the ‘other’ have mainly appeared on the fringes of tourism research.689 Those
scholars who draw on postcolonial criticism argue that it is not only the phenomenon of ignoring the marginalized, but also the romantification of the subaltern that reproduces unethical representations of otherness and deepens the binary oppositions between active self and passive other.690
Spivak’s work can be of help here, as her speciality lies in problematizing the intention to ‘give the voice’ to the subaltern other. Her sharp critique demands that one must acknowledge, as the very first step, that the combi- nation of Eurocentric perceptions and trivialization of global inequalities might seriously limit the possibilities of envisioning ethically sound en- counters within global tourism.691 In other words, Spivak’s692 work helps to
understand the various consequences of neglecting the wider structures of disadvantage and oppression. This challenges, for instance, the assumption 686 Spivak 1988, 283-4; 2000, 269-70..
687 Spivak, 1997; for postcolonial representations and worldmaking in tourism, see Hollinshead 2007, 2010; Ateljevic et al. 2012; Salazar 2013; Caton 2013. When discussing about the en- counters that are mediated through representations, it becomes obvious that an intersubjective relation would always be an embodied one.
688 Aithcinson 2001; these kinds of representations in travel discourse is discussed also by Simmons 2004; see also Chambers & Buzinde 2015.
689 Hall & Tucker 2004; Higgins-Desbiolles & Powys Whyte 2013. 690 Aitchinson 2001; Kapoor 2004, 269; Smith, M. 2009a. 691 see Spivak 1988, 272-4, 283-4; Kapoor 2004
that calling the ‘others’ ‘partners’ instead of ‘beneficiaries’ or ‘hosts’ instead of ‘locals’ would succeed in erasing paternalism and colonial legacy from the visitors’ minds.693 Hence, it is necessary to continue to reflect on the ways in
which the colonial past and neo-colonial present continue to mediate even supposedly emancipatory encounters with the ‘other’.
Neglecting the legacy of colonialism and modern forms of economic and political exploitation is, as Spivak694 puts it, epistemic violence, a practice
that forms a pertinent part of neoliberal orthodoxy. In consequence, the unawareness or ignorance of inequalities between self and other allows the maintenance of European ’theatres of responsibility’.695 Unfortunately, even
the majority of participatory tourism initiatives produce dramas which fit in well as scenes in this theatre. Tourism researchers Moscardo, Blackman and Murphy696 describe tourism projects through the analogy of a Greek tragedy
in order to explain how different stakeholders engage in decision making. A valid question here is – and one that has troubled some scholars within community-based tourism studies – is why the role of the protagonists is so often played by the guests.697
Spivak, who has valuable insights into these kinds of settings, directs her concern especially to the epistemic or conceptual violence that shapes the relationships between the self and the other.698 What Spivak, Derrida
and Levinas all agree on is the impossibility of escaping epistemic violence when engaging with the other in discourse.699 For them the ethical appears in
language. In fact, it was Derrida’s approach to conceptual violence in Of Grammatology which helped Spivak to situate Derrida’s reflections on ethics and violence in terms of the history of European colonialism. In her work, Spivak criticizes our excessive zeal to speak for, and speak about, the ‘other’. Although I will return to the violence of representation in the methodology 693 Eriksson Baaz 2005, 6-12.
694 Spivak 1988, 280; see Höckert 2014, 108. 695 Morton 2007; see Höckert 2014. 696 Moscardo et al. 2014.
697 van der Duim 2006; Butcher 2007; Saarinen, 2010; Goodwin 2012. 698 Morton 2007, 61; see also Veijola & Jokinen 1998; Wearing 1998. 699 Derrida AEL 1999; Spivak 1988, 280; Levinas OB 1998.
chapter (Chapter 4.4.), I should clarify here that Spivak herself is unwilling to provide concrete help on how to represent the ‘other’ or encounter the ‘other’ through development projects, academic research, tourism advertise- ments, and the like. Instead, the main contribution of Spivak’s reflections is to point out the dubious character of the privileged position which allows one to enter, master encounters between self and the other and produce representations of the other.700
Spivak’s proceeding in negative terms makes one doubt whether ethical (non-violent) relations could actually ever flourish in tourism and develop- ment projects. However, her scepticism should not be interpreted as pure pessimism. It is clear that Spivak considers Levinas’ account (in Totality and Infinity) of an ethical relation and an open dialogue between self and other to be impossible. Even Levinas’701 himself describes our interpersonal
relations as always asymmetrical. However, Spivak still seems to be driven to understand the impossibility of ethical engagement for collective action. In other words, the impossibility of ethical and unconditional hospitality and ethical singularity should not be seen as a justification to ignore the unequal power relations between self and other. On the contrary, emancipatory inter- ventions require acknowledgement of impossibility and acknowledgement of asymmetry. As I choose to interpret this, Spivak’s thinking here calls for acknowledging inequalities in the spheres between self and other, where the risks and responsibilities of welcoming become negotiated.
A valid basis for discussion, in Spivak’s view, is to try to expose our blind spots, for instance as Westerners or local ‘elite’, by challenging two assump- tions.702 The first is that the political desire of the ‘oppressed’ and the political
interests of development experts are identical. That is, we should question the naïve and paternalistic belief that the ‘other’ is always willing to speak and participate, and is capable of doing so if I only listen and want her to speak and participate. The second assumption that must be questioned is that the voices of the ‘other’ could be recovered from the outside and that 700 For ‘relative subalternity’, see Dussel et al. 2008; for epistemic violence in tourism, see Veijola
& Jokinen 1998.
701 Levinas 1969, 215-6; 1985, 98-9; Derrida AEL 1999, 23-4; 2002. 702 see also Kapoor 2004.
scholars can represent these voices as objective intermediaries. For Spivak703
the problem lies not in the inability of the other to speak, but rather in the unwillingness and incapability of the culturally dominant to listen. More specifically, Spivak takes the view that the privileged position which aca- demic researchers and development consultants, for example, occupy is the reason why the ‘locals’ cannot be heard. Rather, the other is always already interpreted. As Spivak herself puts it, elite or hegemonic discourses are deaf to the subaltern, even when she or he speaks or resists.704 The consequences
are trivialization and invalidation of ways of knowing that fall outside of the West’s, and the local elite’s, languages, epistemic traditions and philoso- phies. According to Spivak, these are consequences that can be described as epistemic ignorance and violence.705
Inspired by Spivak’s example, I have modified her question ‘[C]an the subaltern speak?’ to suit tourism scenes and the Levinasian idea of welcom- ing. My preliminary answer is that the subaltern in tourism rarely speaks, as her or his invitation to the other to visit and intervene is already taken for granted. That is, the subaltern other in tourism is the one whose welcoming is always taken for granted. This means that the other becomes relatively subaltern706 in the context of tourism. What is more, still following in
Spivak’s footsteps, the subaltern is never really welcomed – physically or in discourse – which results in the subaltern never gaining access to social mobility. According to Spivak707, it is the privileged (and mobile) position of
the self which restricts the self ’s possibility to listen and welcome the other. For this reason, Spivak708 challenges us and herself to unlearn our privi-
leges as loss. The first part of this task requires noticing that one’s class, race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, ideology, education, occupation, language, or 703 Spivak 1988, 280-4; 2000, 269-70.
704 Kapoor 2004, 639; Spivak, 1988, 283; for another example from Nicaragua, see Anja Nygren’s (1999, 267-88) Local Knowledge in the Environment-Development Discourse. From dichot- omies to situated knowledges.
705 Kuokkanen 2007, 66-8; Sharpe & Spivak 2002, 613. 706 For relative subalternity, see Moraña et al. 2008. 707 Spivak 1988, 272-4.
even access to the Internet can create relative advantage.709 Spivak710 then
asks us to think about what kind of prerogatives we – as individuals and groups – might have as visitors in this particular context. For instance, in tourism and development encounters, these relative advantages as dominant groups can be based on many roles, such as being a tourist, working for development, researching tourism, and so on.711 In fact, it seems like simply
travelling from ‘the cores’ to ‘the peripheries’ strengthens the subjectivity of the mobile traveller. Or, as Sara Ahmed712 has expressed it, some of us are
afforded agency within the global by relegating others to ‘local’ spaces. The travel itineraries of development workers and volunteer tourists, ‘the white men and women with their burden’, make sense as long as their hosts remain in the marginal space outside the hegemonic discourses. In other words, guests are allowed to presume the other’s welcome as long as the other is ‘not quite there yet’.713 Hence, looking for a more equal relationship with
the ‘other’ requires, as a starting point, acknowledging how one’s own active, privileged subjectivity becomes established through ‘freezing’ the other.
The second part of Spivak’s task of changing one’s mind-set by ‘unlearning one’s privilege as loss’ means recognizing one’s prejudices, preconceptions, and learned responses.714 To put it in somewhat different terms, our prerogatives
have given us only limited knowledge and prevented our gaining new under- standing. As a result, we are simply not equipped to understand different ways of knowing.715 Spivak’s approach means denying the idea of the Enlightenment
that the world is expected to be knowable through observation. For her there are certain knowledges, experiences and existences that are closed off from 709 Sharpe & Spivak 2002, 617-8; Höckert 2014, 108-9; for discussion on ‘white bodies unlearning
their privilege’, see Vrasti, 2013, 123-4. 710 Spivak 1988.
711 For analysis of identity and privilege in development aid, see: Kapoor, ‘Hyper self-reflexive development?’; Eriksson Baaz, Paternalism of Partnerhip; p. 106; for analysis of tourism, see Bergeå, Class Travellers in Chicken Buses; Vrasti, Volunteer Tourism in the Global South, p. 22. 712 Ahmed 2000, 172; I want to thank my colleague Piia Lavila at University of Helsinki for the
discussion about this thought.
713 See also Bhabha 1994; Ahmed 2000; Tucker 2010; Dicks 2003, 52; Eriksson Baaz 2005 714 Spivak 2000, 20; Kapoor 2004; McEwan 2009, 68. This can be seen as the core of post-critical
ethnography (chapter 4.1.), see e.g. Madison 2004. 715 Spivak 1988, 280, 284; Kuokkanen 2007, 3, 103.
the ‘privileged view’. 716 As I understand Spivak’s thinking, the desire to listen
and to take into account, for instance, local knowledge is rather misleading. Notably, paternalistic intentions, unaware as they are of these limitations, can also be seen as a form of silencing, objectifying and trivializing the other.717
It means pretending that the encounters between self and other are open and unconditional despite self’s limitations in welcoming the other in discourse. Spivak herself has been criticized for her tendency to silence the subaltern by focusing on the division between self and the other, of reinscribing – rather than disrupting – the authority of the privileged ones.718 While other
Gramscian historians have been blamed for their extensive optimism about the possibilities of recovering subaltern agency, for Spivak any attempts to do so appear almost pointless. Instead of laying emphasis on the relational construction of privileged and subaltern positions, Spivak seems to have answered this critique by becoming more cautious about using the concept of ‘privileged’ as such.719 It is clear that privilege becomes an uncomfort-
able concept, especially if it is used for categorizing people as subaltern or privileged. However, these conceptualizations still are relevant when aiming to understand the attitudes and assumptions that shape our encounters with the other.720 For instance, a study in the US has shown that people who
drive expensive cars tend to drive over crosswalks more recklessly than those sitting in more modest car models.721 This could be interpreted as limited
attention towards others and as lack of willingness to be interrupted by other people.722 The same study indicated how people who win huge sums
of money in the lottery tend to adopt superior attitudes towards others, although their relative privilege is based mainly on luck.
716 McEwan, 2009, 68.
717 Spivka 1988, 275-6; Seppälä 2013. 718 Hiddleston 2009, 163; Mohan 2004 719 See Sharpe & Spivak 2002.
720 For instance, according to a study done in the US, people tend to start to believe that they actually are better than others and in a privileged position, even if they have received their position without actually doing anything for it by themselves (e.g. lottery).
721 Piffa et al. 2011.
In any event, my intention here is to place emphasis on the significance of Spivak’s ideas in tourism schemes. I wish to propose that the privileged position of guests can undermine the possibilities of promoting more equal and responsible forms of visiting and travelling. So could it be that the pre-constructed categories of what tourism is and how it should help local communities most probably, unintentionally, restrict the subjectivities, choices and voices of the other? Or is it possible that the existing inequalities between the West and the Rest, or the core and the periphery, or haves and