Mobility Humanities

In “A Phenomenology of Tourist Experience,” Erik Cohen outlines two ways of tourism centred on the world of meaning. For a person whose work and life are in line with the world of meaning, tourism appears to be a temporal break away from the life he agrees with and the spiritual centre. In contrast, for people whose daily lives are alienated from the spiritual centre of their own society, travel often appears as a pilgrimage to look for another spiritual centre. If, according to Cohen, different individuals need to be attached to different centres of sense, if the tourist experience is tightly related to the spiritual centre, then it seems to suggest that the exploration of the senses or meanings of travel initiated by this context must further consider the questions that follow: (1) How to break through the stereotypes and the rubric of the existing spiritual centre in order to achieve a reconstruction of the sense in the tourist experience; (2) how the tourist can recognise a “proper” touristic experience; (3) utilising the perspectives of MeleauPonty and Levinas to discuss the meaning of corporal vision, corporal space and travel; (4) whether or how to discover the meaning of Self during the travel.