Looking at You Looking at Me

An Autoethnographic Account of a Tattooed Female and (Re)appropriation of the Tourist Gaze

Bibliographic Data

ID12634674
AuthorsSonja Modesti (Colorado State University, corresponding author)
Year2011
Volume11
Issue2
Pages1-14
Publication date2011-07-10
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Intercultural Communication (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1404-1634 • E-ISSN: 1404-1634
PublisherInternational Collaboration for Research and Publications (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.36923/jicc.v11i2.528
OpenAlexW4386203190
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited21

As noted through Ury’s (2002) work, the tourist gaze serves as a literal and metaphorical construct describing the process involved in viewing the interculturally different Other. However, traditional understandings of the tourist gaze do not account for the reciprocity involved in the gazing process. Through the use of autoethnography enhanced with visual ethnographic artifacts, this essay dissects the presumed linear nature of the gaze, asserting that certain subjects may become objects of a (re)appropriated gaze in travel encounters. As evidenced through descriptions of travel in Mexican and Central American cultures, the tattooed female tourist serves as such a subject. Illustrating the (re)appropriated and (re)allocated tourist gaze, she is postured as an exotic Other, becoming one vehicle through which a Central American native or local may assess both U.S. American and/or tattoo culture as a whole

Aesthetics · Appropriation · Archaeology · Art · Autoethnography · Ethnography · Gaze · Linguistics · Nightlife · Psychoanalysis · Reciprocity (cultural anthropology · Sociology · Subject (documents · Tourism · Anthropology · Computer Science · Crime, Deviance, and Social Control · Gender Studies · History · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology · Tattoo and Body Piercing Complications · Visual Culture and Art Theory

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Open DOIOpen Access