Tourism research with ‘double-eyes’: A selfless epistemology

Phantasmagorical contexts, wherein the ineffable and the quasi-mystical emerge through encounters with the material, the mediated, the sensual and the affectual, have received considerable attention in tourism research, bringing into view absent presences. However, their fluid, evanescent, transcendental, and often uncomfortable atmospheres make them an easy target for exoticism. Reflexivity has been widely highlighted as a way to avoid exoticising, colonial approaches to knowledge production. Despite the recent focus on reflexivity and calls for deeper reflexivity, there has been little attention on how reflexivity can be achieved. This paper draws on the Kyoto School and their philosophy of ‘nothingness’ to develop different epistemic groundings for more messy, embodied, situated tourism research. A selfless epistemology is illustrated through a process of learning, unlearning and re-emerging to see with ‘double-eyes.’