Hi Phil,
Are you referring to MOURNING SEX? It was dubbed 'mourning sickness' in
the UK press? If I'm reading your post correctly, then that's quite
bizarre and hilarious! But I must be getting something wrong, right?
Can you please clarify what was called 'mourning sickness?'
----- Original Message -----
From: Philip Stone <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wednesday, November 16, 2005 10:40 am
Subject: Re: Miserable Affairs Museum in Thailand
> Hi... on the initial note, the UK press have termed it 'mourning
> sickness'; similarly Seaton & Lennon liken it to the general
> psychological tendency of 'schadenfreude'; and in a forthcoming paper,
> I've suggested 'rubbernecking has become a recreational activity'....
> yet the question remains why!?
>
> Regards
> PHIL
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> ------------------
> Philip Stone
> Senior Lecturer / Course Leader
> (Editor - The Dark Tourism Forum)
>
> 'Death, Disaster and the Macabre - Discover more about the 'darker
> sideof tourism' by visiting The Dark Tourism Forum at
> www.dark-tourism.org.uk
>
> Recent Publication(s)
> Stone, P.R (2005) "Consuming Dark Tourism - a call for research"
> eReview of Tourism Research, Vol 3(5), p.109-117. Available Full Text:
> http://ertr.tamu.edu/appliedresearch.cfm?articleid=90
>
> Stone, P.R (2005) "Dark Tourism - an old concept in a new world"
> Tourism, The Tourism Society, Quarter IV, Issue 125, p.20
>
>
> University of Central Lancashire (UCLan)
> Lancashire Business School
> Department of Tourism & Leisure Management
> PRESTON
> PR1 2HE
> UK
>
> Room: Greenbank 130
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> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------------------------
>
>
> >>> [log in to unmask] 16/11/2005 15:05:38 >>>
> Hi Wendy,
>
> That's what interests me about Dark Tourism, as
> well: the question of what motivates people to spend
> money journeying into some of the 'darkest' periods
> of human history, often to re-traumatize themselves,
> or to invoke creepy feelings that are hard to shake.
>
> Another interesting book on the topic of injuries
> (both physical and psychic ones, or exploring the
> relationship between the two forms of wounding) is
> Peggy Phelan's MOURNING SEX. I'm attaching a link to
> my review of this book below, though the book itself
> is far more complex than a review can suggest:
>
> http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/pmc/text-only/issue.998/9.1.r_smalec.txt
>
>
> I think all of the factors you list below play a
> role in our fascination with macabre events. There's
> certainly a sense of empathy: "Isn't it awful!" And
> there's also a sense of distance and relief as we
> quickly turn to look, then look away: "Thank heavens
> it wasn't me."
>
> But I think there is finallly a profound need to
> understand *why* or *how* this much suffering could
> have happened, how it might have been avoided, and
> so forth. At the end of the day, I think there is a
> need for personal and cultural narratives, and
> perhaps this need to construct 'personal' narratives
> is facilitated through the process of firsthand
> engagements with traumatic sites and sitings?
>
> On a personal note, I stayed up late the other night
> watching a television special on Andrea Yates, the
> woman in Texas who drowned her 5 children. My
> husband was really annoyed with me because he wanted
> to go to bed: "You already KNOW how the story ends,"
> he said, "Why do you need to stay up and watch this
> now?"
>
> I couldn't explain that need to him, or to myself.
> But as I stayed up and watched the program, I
> learned things I hadn't known about Yates and her
> personal background: her intense involvement with
> fundamentalist religion, her doctors' struggle to
> treat her mental illness with various medications,
> her seclusion with the children in very cramped
> living quarters, and her determination to have even
> MORE children, despite the fact that doctors advised
> her that going off her medication would lead to
> recurring psychotic symptoms.
>
> After watching the show, I couldn't believe that she
> was in jail, and not in a hospital getting
> treatment. So I think part of the fascination with
> dark tourism might be a wish to make these stories
> "humanly understandable?" Or a need to make their
> subjects seem "human" again?
> > but we DO have a fascination with injury and
> accident, even here in
> > polite old England, folks will slow right down to
> look at a road
> > accident. "Isn't it awful" they say but still got
> to look.
> > Perhaps its a perverse joy in being so glad it
> didn't happen to "me".
> > This is what fascinates me about the whole dark
> tourism thing, why
> > would anyone want to see these things, or even the
> site of these
> > things?? Is it just the "isn't it awful" but still
> got to look
> > reflex, or something deeper and more fundamental
> to the human
> > psyche?
> >
> >
> >
> > wendy
> >
> >
> >
> >
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