Embodying Ideologies in Tourism: A Commemorative Visitor Book in Israel as a Site of Authenticity

Authenticity is a central meta-narrative in tourism, accounting for the unique appeal of this interdisciplinary field of study and remarkable growth during the last century. The key role authenticity plays in tourism is not surprising if we consider its very nature. Tourism is essentially an industry that transports people from one place-their home, to another-the destination. This corporeal travel holds a promise: to transcend mediation processes, or short-circuit representational imagery, through actual arrival at the desired scene. Unlike the media industry (in which authenticity also plays a constitutive role, see Peters 2001; Van Leeuwen 2001), travel is not marketed as an endeavor that entails mediated images. Rather, tourism is modernity’s promise of a corporeal encounter with the Thing itself, with the genuine attraction, be it a site, place, artifact, or combinations thereof. Hence, to those who can afford it, tourism offers one of the dearest commodities available under Western-modern epistemology, namely immediate and unmediated access to (read: consumption) of the Real.1