On souvenirs and metonymy

Abstract

This article scrutinizes souvenirs as highly significant, but underexplored material objects of contemporary travel and tourism. It adopts a reflexive interpretive approach to explore the relationship between materiality, tourism and constructions of self-identity and examines how individuals reflexively use souvenirs as touchstones of memory, (re)creating polysensual tourism experiences, self-aware of their roles of ‘tourists’. It pays particular attention to the ways in which souvenirs are objects mediating experiences in time and space and argues for more experiential and reflexive study of the roles of materiality and memory in the construction of tourist identities and performances. It concludes by suggesting how further interpretive studies could offer unique insights into how the absorption of souvenirs into the realm of the mundane and the domestic transforms the home space, fusing tourism and contemporary everyday life.