Tracing the Communist Past: Toward a Performative Approach to Memory in Tourism

Abstract:Historical-themed guided tours are a basic format of the touristic storytelling industry. By understanding them as spatially bound rituals of collective gazing in which images of the past are drawn collaboratively by the guide and the tourists, this article argues that guided tours provide a lens through which to examine the making of history. Focusing on commercial communism tours in Warsaw, Prague and Bratislava, the article shows that the promise to bodily experience the communist past via immersion enables ludic performances that can both strengthen and unsettle historical images. As a paradoxical result, communism tours evoke both nostalgia for a simple, easily understandable world and a negative image of an unwanted, difficult past.