"Grond van het hemelse volk" : Zuid-Afrika en de "authenticiteit" van de toeristische ervaring in recente Poolse persberichten

Abstract

This article offers and analyses of the contemporary touristic experience in South Africa, based on the travel accounts published in the Polish press during 2000-2006. Attempts to explain the authenticity of touristic experience as made by MacCannel in his work 'The Tourist: a new theory of the leisure class' (1976), which is viewed as a classic today. Argues along the lines of postmodern thinkers, such as Slavoj Zizek, whose findings enabled the author to elucidate the contemporary 'touristic habitus' to a more satisfactory level. Claims that it is a tourist's, not an ethnographer's, appreciation of 'authenticity' in the postmodern period that is superior.