Ruins and the politics of disappearance: racial and social invisibilities in Detroit’s abandonment tourism

Abstract

This article seeks to contribute to scholarship on processes of disappearance by exploring contemporary engagements with ruins through practices of abandonment tourism. Based on an in-depth empirical analysis of tours run in Detroit during the 2010s, it examines how symbolic, material and political disappearances intersect in tourist narratives and experiences. Drawing on participant observation, survey data and interviews, this article shows how aesthetic, affective and discursive framings of ruins contribute to a neutralization of the political and racial dimensions of urban decline. By analysing the social, spatial and temporal configurations that structure tourist engagements with Detroit’s ruins, the article highlights how disappearance functions as a situated and multiscalar process. In light of current redevelopment processes, it ultimately raises the question of what critical engagements remain possible when the material traces of abandonment disappear.

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