The Inconsitency of Truth

"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts," ~William Shakespeare, As You Like It Vysehrad from the Vltava: Image courtesy of www.czechatlas.com

From the first page, MacCannell’s article is clearly outdated in its mode of thought as far as sociology and anthropology go. From his use of terms such as “primitive” to his insistence on denying the awareness of the ability to “‘participate’ in one’s own life,” it is clear that the postmodern terms in which anthropology and sociology are now discussed are not in his research. Though he acknowledges certain points of reflexivity and subjectivity of experience, I think that in postulating that the tourist is automatically on a quest for authenticity and that the tourist/intellectual boundary is a misconception, he reveals a shortsightedness that is unforgivable. With the rise of more recent research, it is impossible to lay out such black and white rules and ideas about any group of people, be they Amazonian aborigines or Americans on vacation. The general term “tourists” is certainly far to gross today.

I know that personally, my experience here has been plagued by a severe introspection that defies his continuum of front to back authenticity. I find myself questioning the authenticity of my experience most when I’m engaging in activities and settings that would probably be considered back regions, such as being led by my RA’s one evening into a small forest on the edge of Prague to roast sausages in the place that my RA Eva did as a child, or waiting in line at the bank or post office, surrounded by Czech people going about their days. At these moments I am not pleased with my authentic experience, I do not think of myself as gleaning an understanding of the people of this country. Instead, I am forced into a lonely evaluation of whether I even want to be there in the first place. By contrast, when on a tour of the Jewish Quarter, I happily listened to the tour guide, speaking in English, informing me of the history of Jews in Prague, much of which the RA who organized it didn’t know herself. What about appreciating the beauty of a place, or its historical value? Yes these are places that are only open to a public because they are tourist destinations, but to deny their authenticity as beautiful or historically worthy places is selling them far short of their true value.

In our consumerist society, often the value of the consumption is based on its exclusivity, and so a story that only you can share, a description of a place that only you know feels valuable, and though it’s true that there is an emphasis on unique and “authentic” experiences in tourism, I think that it is equally easy to be moved and enriched by Strawberry Fields in New York as it is to be moved and enriched by having a conversation with an old Chinese man running a fruit stand on the Lower East Side. This said, I believe that if someone wants to live in a culture or record a culture, then it’s true, the front to back stages of authenticity apply. When I realized where to go to get cheap food and beer here, or when I began to understand the Czech sense of humor, I felt that I had enriched my life and was more able to live comfortably in a foreign place. But the deep thrill I experience whenever I sit atop the hill at Vysehrad, the place that one of the largest student marches of the Velvet Revolution began and a common tourist destination, a beautiful, profound, historic place, has proven to be much more vital to my experience here than any conversation with a Czech person I’ve had. Fuck authenticity. I ain’t on no quest.