BAD FAITH AND CHECKLIST TOURISM: A SARTREAN ANALYSIS A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY by Danielle M. LaSusa August, 2010 Examining Committee Members: Lewis R. Gordon, Advisory Chair, Philosophy Paul C. Taylor, Philosophy Kristin Gjesdal, Philosophy Terry Rey, External Reader, Religion, Temple University ii © by Danielle M. LaSusa 2010 All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT This project offers a unique contribution to the scholarship on Jean-Paul Sartre’s concept of bad faith by providing a sustained exploration of bad faith in the context of contemporary tourism. More specifically, I explore the bad faith of what I call “checklist tourism,” which defines the tourist trip as a rapid succession of visits from one “must- see” site to the next, snapping photos and collecting souvenirs along the way. I argue that checklist tourism offers a safe and comfortable structure for travel that protects tourists against Sartrean anguish—that is, the experience of alienation, fear, freedom, and responsibility—that travel can sometimes evoke. This analysis contributes to the literature on bad faith in three main ways. First, I provide an extended analysis of the Sartrean spirit of seriousness, highlighting part of this concept that has thus far been underdeveloped in the scholarship. I argue that checklist tourism manifests the spirit of seriousness, which accepts the obligation of “must-see” sites and belief in the transcendent value of the material objects seen on the tour. Second, I explore the embodied bad faith of the possession and appropriation of the material world (rather than studying the possession of people, as most scholars have done), arguing that the tourist attempts to appropriate tourist sites through bodily engagement with them. Third, I develop a theory of play as authenticity, and I offer a systematic investigation of it as a rejection of the ontological bad faith project to be self-identical (i.e. to be God), and a reflective conversion to self-recovery. I then explore the character of the “post-tourist,” which has been developing in the tourism literature and which iv represents a way of touring that rejects the seriousness of the “must-see” sites in favor of an attitude of levity, spontaneity, and playfulness. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks to Lewis Gordon, whose thoughtful and detailed feedback on several drafts, intellectual generosity, and unwavering belief in this project have made it possible. Paul Taylor was instrumental in the early stages of this project, and has been confidant, mentor, and advisor in things professional and personal through all of my years at Temple; I am very grateful to have had your guidance. Thanks to Kristin Gjesdal, whose tough but compassionate comments evoked an intellectual rigor in this project that it may have otherwise lacked. Thanks to David Wolfsdorf, Miriam Solomon, Nöel Carroll, and Phil Alperson who have offered professional guidance, advice, and support. Thanks to my number one work ally and good friend, Sara Davis, with whom I spent long hours in coffee shops writing our dissertations, twenty minutes at a time. Thanks to friends and colleagues Oz Blaker, Lucy Collins, Pat Denehy, Lior Levy, Jess Lewis-Turner, Dave Karpf, Jesse Young, and Emiliano Esteves, who read drafts, offered advice, and acted as sounding boards for my work. Thanks to Joan Grassbaugh Forry for showing me how it’s done. Thanks to Rebekah Buchanan and the Temple Writing Center whose Dissertation Writing Retreats were the site of many productive hours of work. Thanks to Jeremy Ellis, who believed in me even when I didn’t. Thanks to Bob Money for giving me a solid preparation for graduate school and boosts of confidence along the way. Thanks to Jo Ellen Jacobs, who has been a shining model of a passionate life of learning and who has always made me believe that great things are possible. Thanks to my love, friend, and partner, Dan Short, who has endured hardships and celebrated successes with me; I hope we share many more to come. Finally, I could never offer enough gratitude to vi my parents, John and Patricia, and my sister, Jessica, who have been my unfailing cheerleaders, my great loves, and my home, regardless of where each of us lives. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT .....................................................................................................................iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .............................................................................................v CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................1 2. EXPLORING BAD FAITH .........................................................................................12 3. TOURIST IN SITUATION .........................................................................................55 4. THE ANGUISH OF TRAVEL AND THE BAD FAITH OF “MUST-SEE” SITES ...................................................110 5. POSSESSING THE WORLD THROUGH TOURISM ..............................................142 6. THE PLAYFUL TOURIST .........................................................................................177 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................207 1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION “Let each one refer to his own experience.”1 - Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1943 Jean-Paul Sartre is a philosopher who is today sometimes considered dramatic, pessimistic, or passé, yet his concepts have appeared in countless philosophical essays, literary texts, plays, lectures, conferences, and conversations. Sartre has always been not only a philosopher of the European Academy, but also a playwright, novelist, and political activist, plugged in to the social and cultural happenings of his time. The themes of his work speak not only to his cultural milieu, but also to the experiences of the human condition, and one only need to sit in on any undergraduate course on Sartre’s work to know that these themes continue to resonate with those who study them. In particular, Sartre’s concept of bad faith as an attempt at the evasion of human freedom surprises, challenges, awakens, offends, and sometimes elicits vehement anger, if not lively discussion, from those both inside and outside the academy. A large body of scholarly work is devoted to understanding and interpreting Sartre’s complex and controversial concept of bad faith. This project seeks to contribute to this scholarship, but in a unique way. I study bad faith through a sustained exploration of a contemporary cultural 1 Jean-Paul, Sartre, Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology, trans. Hazel E. Barnes (New York: Washington Square Press, 1956), 358. 2 phenomenon: tourism. Investigating bad faith in the context of this contemporary phenomenon provides a unique lens through which to identify and ameliorate weaknesses and gaps in the literature both on bad faith and on tourism, and offers a vision of each that provides new insights. I take my cue from Sartre, one of whose notable gifts is the exploration of dense philosophical concepts through the investigation of concrete examples from his everyday experiences. Sartre explores and explains bad faith, ontological structures of consciousness, self-reflection, human freedom, and a variety of other fundamental philosophical issues through a phenomenological investigation of ordinary occurrences, events, and people: a waiter, a woman on a date, a homosexual, counting cigarettes, playing tennis, hiking mountains, writing a book, waiting for a friend in a café. His exploration of his own bad faith in his autobiography, The Words, in his sometimes- confessional War Diaries, and through the characters in his novels and plays, “not only suggests the ubiquity of bad faith in Sartre’s worldview but also shows that, for Sartre, bad faith is a deeply existential, not simply academic concern.”2 Indeed, for Sartre, and for many who study his work, bad faith strikes a chord as a profoundly personal lived experience. This is, for me, part of the appeal of taking bad faith as an object of study. I sympathize with Robert Solomon who laments, “In an age when philosophers have finally become professionals instead of street-corner kibitzers, I stubbornly believe that philosophy ought to speak to ordinary, intelligent people about personal worries, 2 Ronald E. Santoni, Bad Faith, Good Faith, and Authenticity in Sartre's Early Philosophy (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995), xv. 3 reflections, and experiences. It’s embarrassing to be so out of style.”3 Indeed, although many professional philosophers speak about fundamental issues of human experience as though they are removed from all human experience whatsoever, I am loathe to forget that our most profound philosophical questions arise from passionate encounters with ourselves in light of our own lived experiences. One of the great virtues of Sartre’s existential philosophy is that he maintains this intimate connection with human experience. In this spirit, I wish to explore Sartre’s concept of bad faith through a sustained study of contemporary tourism, which might be considered a mundane contemporary social and cultural phenomenon. Before the work of tourism scholars over the last fifty years, much of the academic community had long perceived tourism as an activity of leisure and banal excess, unworthy of academic