Geographical practice and postmodern destination image: a European perspective

The present-day evolution of tourist imagery has received considerable critical attention in the tourist literature of late. What I propose to add to the already existing discussion on the topic is what I jokingly term a ‘continental’ perspective. The reader will be hard pressed to find an extensive presentation of relevant anglophone work as I believe that any such presentation on my part (coming, as I do, from an external vantage point) could only be partial, at best; neither do I pretend to present a definitive vision of all ‘other’ perspectives on the subject. My considerations are framed, rather, around a particular set of critiques emergent from recent Italian geographic thought; critiques that might serve as a counter-point to the debates of English-language theorists based in postmodern understandings of the crisis of representation and the way(s) in which it has served to shape our conceptions/perceptions of the world, of distance, and of Otherness.