Provider: Ingenta Connect Database: Ingenta Connect Content: application/x-research-info-systems TY - ABST AU - Bryce, Derek TI - Turkey, Tourism and Interpellated ‘Westernness’: Inscribing Collective Visitor Subjectivity JO - Tourism Geographies PY - 2012-08-01T00:00:00/// VL - 14 IS - 3 SP - 444 EP - 466 KW - Istanbul KW - teleology KW - enunciation KW - Orientalism KW - subjectivity KW - historicism KW - the other KW - Eurocentrism KW - Turkey KW - Interpellation N2 - That tourism's representation of places in terms of the clichéd and the banal is a means to overcome consumer uncertainty is surely an unproblematic observation. None the less it invites enquiry into those discourses circulating within the representing culture (the source of tourism demand) constitutive of the subject position that both reassures and is reassured. Turkey is frequently presented to potential consumers in a litany of familiar binaries (West/East, Europe/Asia, Modernity/History etc.). A collective gaze is invited in which tourists may conceive of themselves as part of an abstract collectivity, that of interpellated ‘Western-ness’ or ‘European-ness’ continuously reiterating a wondrous encounter with the very idea of the East. In this respect, Turkey is deployed instrumentally as a discursive device, commodifying the self-designation of ‘Western-ness’. Therefore, the occupation of a European subject position in relation to the idea of the East is an ‘attraction’ offered to consumers of tourism in Turkey. Turkey's position is quite singular in its categorization as being functionally European, yet also a site that articulates, in abstract terms, ‘Europe's’ self-assigned cultural boundaries. The notion that the Orient exists as a self-confirming object for the West is a commonplace for those familiar with Edward Said's critique of Orientalism. However, Turkey is utilized as a mechanism for the functioning of that discourse, rather than Orientalized in and of itself. That this occurs within a sphere of popular consumption such as tourism does not diminish its discursive potency in underwriting arbitrary notions of the civilizational patterning of the world. UR - https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg/rtxg/2012/00000014/00000003/art00005 M3 - doi:10.1080/14616688.2011.610351 UR - https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2011.610351 ER -