The word souvenir conjures immediately images of snow domes and key rings, tea towels and coasters, replications of monuments and sites resized and made portable and available for purchase - a testimony of your visit and experiences. Souvenirs are available wherever tourism and its destinations may be found. Their replicated forms appear in a multitude of contexts which predominately represent sites and events situated away from the everyday domestic space of home. It is widely assumed that souvenirs, (in the systems that gives a hierarchy to objects) occupy as position as merely kitsch: the 'bad' and artificial counterpart of tourist art.
In this study, I intend to focus on the souvenir as both the object and subject of inquiry. I will outline the relationship between the mass produced tourist souvenir and its subsequent role as an object of nostalgia, belonging to the private realm of the individual, operating as part of the chronicle of personal history. This essay focuses on the transformation of an object from the state of mass produced consumer item, to occupying a privileged status as a personal possession.
Through an investigation into the social relations that distinguish the souvenir, it is my intention to investigate and define these characteristics to theoretically position the object in relation to its possessor or owner. Although I am concentrating on the area of personal artifacts or talismans, the phenomena of nostalgia and souvenir culture is not bound by an emphasis on the personal and private context - discussions of their relation to collections, national culture, colonialism and state systems are plentiful.
What we dealing with in the context of this research project is the contingency which exists between notions of self identity, temporality and the reality perceived by an individual's experience of a site, which is-- later represented or substantiated by an object deemed significant. Any number of agents or objects are able to mediate a connection between self and place informs these circumstances. Tim Dant[1] describes the role of the object in these circumstances as a mediating object, "one that carries communications between people-information, emotions, ideas and expressions that could have been communicated by speech, gesture, touch or expression-if the people had been with each other."[2]
In effect, this is both a study of the material and the sociological attributes of these generic souvenir objects. Focus and concentration will be given to how these objects are magically transformed into precious belongings, becoming from that moment, a pathway for the owner to create stories and narratives around their experiences of the past. The origins of the object - its 'creation' as a mediating object, is also taken into account as having a part to play in the sequence of events which occurs in the process of commodity exchange. The role of the fetish in such relations is also a concern in this paper, as there are many implications of fetishism being evident in this strange mix of consumerism, myth, memory and desire.
I am concerned with the transference of signification which occurs at the point of contact, a process which is represented by the financial exchange, and the resulting array of meanings which are attached to these objects, after their status is shifted from banal to exclusive by the owner/purchaser. These meanings arise as a result of a complex web of social relations that result in a range of codes and meanings of significance between objects and individuals.
My project draws its information from a wide range of sources and disciplines including-cultural studies, psychoanalysis, semiotics, aesthetics, Marxism and postcolonial discourse, amongst others. This is due to the diverse proliferation of issues in which this topic is entrenched. My purpose is to present a number of generic tourist objects and experiences as examples, and provide an analysis of the significance of such to the owner or possessor. These examples, presented in the course of this research will be compared with souvenirs that are acquired through noncommercial means.
This is necessary to successfully deal with the complexity of issues surrounding the souvenir object. Ruth Phillips and Christopher Steiner[3] provide a very useful example of the plethora of issues and discourses in which the souvenir may be addressed from a cultural and historical perspective:
"We examine the formation of three parallel discourses about objects, formalised during the second half of the nineteenth century, which continue to inform the thinking of both scholars and consumers about these arts. These three discourses arose from (1) the art historical classification system of fine and applied arts, (2) anthropological theories of the evolution and origins of art, and (3) Victorian responses to the individual production and commoditization (sic) of art."[4]
It is my proposition that though the commodity souvenir and its owner have a relationship that is personal, intimate and invariably nostalgic, it is ultimately tied to economic globalisation through the commodity exchange process. On the one hand, the object is the product of someone's work or labour. Whether modeled in a factory or by hand, it is transformed by way of the process of capitalism (cash economy) - emerging as having the propensity to present a narrative to the purchaser, as a memento of their holiday away. Once safely home from the tour, the owner can reminisce about their holiday when gazing at, or touching the object, narrating to others the adventures had whilst away. In this state of reverie, the social origins by which it came to be in their possession - the labour, transport and negotiations that defined it as a commodity are oblivious. This history is erased upon the point of exchange.
Souvenirs purchased in the context of mass tourism exemplify, under this axiom, exactly what the tourist on holiday wishes to escape from-work. In other words, whilst the object purchased on holiday is the product of someone else's labour, this meaning is invisible after the point of purchase, only the narrative constructed by the tourist/purchaser survives this process of exchange. The remaining story, which calls the object into being as a mediating object, is an outsider's perception of the experience of site, though it does still carry communications, constructed by the contact made whilst on the tour. Phillips and Steiner argue that:
"Throughout history, the evidence of objects has been central to the telling of cross-cultural encounters with distant worlds or remote others. The materiality and physical presence of the object make it a uniquely persuasive witness to the existence of realities outside the compass of an individual's or a community's experience."[5]
What people bring to these inanimate objects in terms of meaning is a prime focus of concentration in this inquiry. By corresponding to these social relationships, it is my intention to prove that the souvenir is incapable, beyond its material history, of having significance or meaning without a connection to an owner. As time goes on its importance will always be relation to that moment in the context of memory, as this is the point of origin.
In terms of where this project is situated in relation to other scholarly inquiries, besides the previously mentioned Unpacking culture and Material Culture in the social world, Susan Stewart provided the most in-depth analysis of the souvenir in On longing. Stewart applies a variety of methods to outline the position and function of the souvenir. She relies most heavily on two methodologies in her analysis of the souvenir, phenomenology and psychoanalysis. By her use of phenomenology she is able to chart a course for the relation of the body to time, experience and memory; by utilizing psychoanalysis she is able to bring to the fore notions of the fetish and desire. Stewart also refers to Hegel and Marx in relation to the materiality of such objects and follows through with a materialist approach to outlining the relationship between self and commodity and the implicit position of this relationship under capitalism.
Other relevant discussions include Umberto Eco's Travels into Hyperreality, Dean MacCannell's Empty Meeting Grounds: the tourist papers and John Urry's The tourist gaze: leisure and travel in contemporary societies. These texts focus more on the processes of tourism rather than exploring the particular aspect of the souvenir and its relationship to the tourist. Other writers such as Meaghan Morris, Stephen Muecke, Paul Carter, Anne McClintock, Homi Bhaba, Gytari Spivak and Benedict Anderson explore processes of colonisation, ownership, identity, commodification and land in a variety of contexts. Many of the essays read during this study also owe their debts to Baudrillard, Virilio, Bachelard, Benjamin and Barthes.
The paper is laid out in the following areas of investigation:
Chapter one: Nostalgia, fetishism and the souvenir
Chapter two: The impact of nostalgia.