“THAT WAS A JOKE, YOU SHOULD LAUGH!” TOUR GUIDES AND THE PERFORMANCE OF HISTORY IN BUDAPEST, HUNGARY

Abstract

The turn to performativity in the social sciences has spawned a new wave of scholarship that considers tourism as a performative process. However, the manner through which scholars understand tourism as performative drama is limiting. A fundamental critique of dramaturgy stems from its inability to account for performance as a chain of emergent social processes. Using the case of free walking tours in Budapest, Hungary, we argue that treating tourismas a performance is an act of fusion that culls its technique by deploying dominant cultural codes, materiality and humor. Performance hinges on an attempt to fuse various elements ina dramatic presentation. These elements include the (1) unsettling presence of the audience’sfeedback, (2) the lingering memory of previous performances, (3) the deployment of cultural codes, (4) the mundanity of the material means of symbolic presentation, and (5) the use of linguistic play through humor. We conclude this essay by elaborating other dimensions that could possibly open up more discussions on tourism as a performative phenomenon.