Attitude to dark tourism

Isabelle Cossart’s article, “I Was The Face Of Disaster Tourism In Post-Katrina New Orleans”, suggests that the sender supports dark tourism as long as it is educational and serves as a necessity.

In the first part of the article, Cossart implies that she initially rejected dark tourism but that she soon realised it was unavoidable in the context of Hurricane Katrina hitting Louisiana: “At first, I was shocked. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to tour the nightmarish scenes we were living among.” (ll. 27-28); “In the fall of 2005, the demand for tours showing the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina became impossible to ignore. It was the only thing customers asked for.” (ll. 8-10).

Her attitude towards dark tourism changed when she realised others were doing it in other places and that people’s curiosity about suffering will bring them to Louisiana: “Their spouses...