Gazing Awry: Reconsidering the Tourist Gaze and natural tourism through a Lacanian-Marxist theoretical framework

The implications for tourism are explored through a consideration of the Lacanian Gaze – a concept well developed in film and performance theory. This reveals an unexplored potential in sightseeing as a means to address de-political and inhibitory conceptions of nature that plague landscape tourism. A Marxist framework provides the conditions upon which this conception of
nature emerges, as the suture for separation between society and nature. As sightseeing brings us to face the symbolic (MacCannell, 2011), the ‘lack’ within this fantasy may be revealed. However, Lacan’s concept of Gaze reveals the limitations of this potential, for tourism in its alliance with the ego, may be supporting this restrictive ideological fantasy. This raises new ethical considerations for tourism development in natural areas.