An imaginary without images? Tourists in (and out of) love

Abstract

Six pop songs from the French language repertoire have been selected for the different ways in which they combine tourism and love. This provides the basis for a set of intersecting imaginaries, which in turn informs analysis of the notion of the imaginary per se. Looking beyond images and representations, this imaginary localizes romantic desire, a specific instance of an individual’s relationship with the other. Tourism appears to amplify and sometimes even reveal feelings in a positive or negative way. These songs, which range in focus from order to liberation, are a means of exerting political control over something that, by definition, defies control: the coming together of two human beings.

Keywords

• imaginaries
• Tourism
• couples
• songs
• inhabiting