Postcolonial perspectives on colonial heritage tourism: The domestic tourist consumption of French heritage in Puducherry, India

摘要

This ethnographic study explores postcolonial Indian perspectives on the production and consumption of the former French colony Puducherry as a destination for colonial heritage tourism, asking: how does colonial heritage capture the imagination of domestic visitors, and what are the rationales amongst local residents and authorities that promote this destination for its colonial heritage? It demonstrates how the use of Puducherry's French legacy is a postcolonial phenomenon which has been a product of Indian interests. A central argument is that we need to investigate the postcolonial complexities of restaging colonial heritage in tourism without assuming a simple dichotomy between tourists from former colonial powers and formerly colonised countries, which has often formed the baseline of postcolonial tourism research.