Tales from nowhere : Burma and the lonely planet phenomenon

Abstract

This essay is an archival reading of the nine editions of Lonely Planet travel guides (published from 1979 to the 2005 edition) containing the progressive creation and narration of the tourist space of Lonely Planet’s Myanmar—in the formative years of its narration as elsewhere as nowhere. I extend Dean MacCannell’s argument from The Tourist to suggest that the function of forbiddenness and nowhere is central to Lonely Planet’s idea of the tourist experience in Myanmar. Moreover, the rhetoric of Lonely Planet has determined particularities of the spatial orderings of Myanmar as a result of tourist structures catering to the idea of the forbidden. Through a reading of Lonely Planet’s rhetoric in its Myanmar texts, we can see the construction of a forbidden place on both literal and metaphorical levels. A rhetorically unique situation exists in Lonely Planet’s role in the Myanmar tourism debate. A project of this scope suggests some ways of reading Lonely Planet’s role in the creation and manipulation of space of tourism in Myanmar. I argue for a careful examination of how Lonely Planet articulates Myanmar as specifically nowhere and, therefore, suitable for appropriation.