Chorastic Space
This introduction to the idea of Chorastic Space comes from an extended review by Phil Dickinson at hyperrhiz.net: "The 'bigger journey' to which counter-tourism points us is our ongoing passage through "a transitory space that a particular kind of performance might be able to bring into being and sustain for a while" (205, 210). "Chorastic space" is the particular modality Smith uses to anchor this model of transformation. This is less a place than a moment of becoming, an arising and a passing away of consciousness of itself as consciousness, a "notional space somewhere between how things are and how they might be" (209). Chorastic space is unyoked momentarily from the weft and warp of dominant ideologies and is accessed through specific ritual invocations: "first exorcism, then spectral resurrection." In practice, these function as what Smith calls 'mis-guides,' that feature lectures and all the haptic accouterments of a mainstream heritage tour; the "walking and pausing, anecdotes and potted histories, jokes and personal reflections," mimicked here with a fiercely absurdist, almost Pythonesque fidelity to the requisite forms (164). Much like de Certeau's art of speaking, counter-tourism becomes, via chorastic resurrection, an "art of living," a vibrant and collectively imagined human riposte to the dead and embalmed landscapes of capital. "People," writes Smith. "Not in every space, but in every place—people!" (201)." |
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