“Anthropological curiosity or mere prurience?”: Literary Pilgrimage and Unpacking the Tourist Gaze in Angela Carter’s ‘A Fertility Festival’

Crofts, Charlotte; Ikoma, Natsumi

Abstract

Abstract:
British novelist Angela Carter lived in Japan between 1969 and 1972, around the same time of Roland Barthes' visit, documented in Empire of Signs (1970). Unlike Barthes, however, Carter's was a gendered experience, and she claims that there, she "learnt what it is to be a woman and became radicalised". At that time, Japan was undergoing a cultural explosion in response to post-war occupation, culminating in the student protests of 1969, yet gender politics remained starkly patriarchal as scrutinised extensively in Carter’s Japanese writings, which include a series of remarkable short stories collected in Fireworks: Nine Profane Pieces (1974) and various articles for New Statesman and New Society. As these writings attest, Carter was acutely aware of her own othering gaze as a European, whilst at the same time, being labelled as doubly other in Japanese society, both as a woman and as a foreigner. The impact of this realisation is reflected in her post-Japan masterpieces, which destabilise the notions of both gender and otherness.

This paper explores ones of her essays, ‘A Fertility Festival' (1974), describing a Shinto ceremony involving the procession of an 8ft wooden phallus. A textual analysis of the essay will be undertaken alongside auto-ethnographic reflection on a literary pilgrimage carried out by the authors of this paper, following in Angela Carter’s footsteps, to the Tagata Fertility Festival on 15 March 2019. The paper will be illustrated by detailed close readings of Carter’s original article, alongside field notes, photographs and videos from a visit to the festival, situating Carter’s 1970s visit through the lens of John Urry’s The Tourist Gaze 3.0.

The paper reflects on Carter’s awareness of her own tourist gaze, the tourist gaze of the 1970s participants, our own tourist gaze and those of contemporary festival-goers in the digital age, with our/their digital cameras, selfie sticks and ability to share on social media. It will reflect on identity and othering, both in terms of nation, culture, class and gender, including the presenters’ (Crofts and Ikoma) perspectives as English and Japanese women, respectively. Affected by Carter's writing, we inevitably question what it means to be British, or Japanese, in a globalised world where tourism is another consumer product.

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: At the Crossroads of Doubt: Anthropology and Anglophone Travel Writing
• Start Date: Sep 27, 2019
• End Date: Sep 28, 2019
• Deposit Date: Nov 5, 2019
• Keywords: Angela Carter, Travel Writing, Anthropology, Pilgrimage, Japan, Fertility Festival
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/4392267