Affective and Emotional Performances of Danger on Tours

In this paper we discuss how danger is affectively and emotionally experienced and performed in different tourism contexts. We draw on Brian Massumi’s work on affect as intensity to show how danger is experienced and outlived to tell the story. The exact origin of danger is not the most important, the relevant part is the circumstance of being on uncertain grounds, following Massumi, whereby the potential futurity of danger can be felt and performed. During tours on uncertain grounds tourists feel and engage with danger, brave it and take risks. Whether touring places ‘made dangerous’ by an ongoing conflict such as in Jordan and Israel/Palestine, or by wild nature and animals in a rainforest in Canada, tourists perform potential, perceived, and possibly actual dangers. Potential danger will always have ‘an unconsummated surplus’ which can generate a ‘self-renewing menace’ as Masumi explains. Tourists, therefore, draw on its uncertainty and possible futurity when taking risks on tours. We draw on data gathered from interviews with tourists and local tourism industry representatives in Jordan, Israel/Palestine and Canada, as well as fieldwork observations, photographs and video diaries. These are different countries, different places – economically, geopolitically, and socially – such dissimilarities, however, offer a rich platform to critically examine, compare and contrast affective and emotional performances of danger in geographies of tourism.