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This conceptual article brings to the attention of tourism scholars new possibilities to theorize dark tourism as an affective socio-spatial encounter. To do so, we frame dark tourism within theories of affect and, in particular, geographies of affect. We show how debates around dark tourism terminology and taxonomies, in most cases underlie considerations on felt, affective aspects of the dark tourism experience. We critically debate the concept of affect, the distinctions between affects and emotions, and the complex issue of representability of affect. Our perspective is underpinned by a necessity to consider the context and limitations that frame the affective experience of the tourist and the resulting encounters. This offers a deeper layer of understanding tourists' experiences in death and disaster places as well as the political and ethical charge imbued in such encounters.

The psychoanalytical concept of the death drive postulated by Freud and Lacan refers to a constant force at the junction between life and death, which is not understood in a biological sense of physical demise of the body, nor in opposition to life. Tourist experiences in conflict zones can be more critically understood through the lens of the death drive. Empirical data for this project draws on individual and group interviews undertaken with tourists and tourism industry representatives in Jordan. Findings suggest that by travelling in a conflict area some tourists negotiate embedded family memories and archaic traumas. Accessing the death drive, tourists also assert and disrupt binaries such as fun/fear and life/death.

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to propose voyeurism as one possible lens to analyse the experiential nature of dark tourism in places of socio-political danger, thus expanding psychoanalytic understandings of those who travel to a ''dark'' place.Design/methodology/approach -Freud's and Lacan's theories on voyeurism are used to examine the desire to travel to and gaze upon something that is (socially constructed as) forbidden, such as a place that is portrayed as being hostile to international tourists. A qualitative and critical analysis approach is employed to examine one tourist's experience of travelling to Iran and being imprisoned as a result of taking a photograph of what he thought was a sunrise but also pictured pylons near an electrical plant.Findings -The authors' analysis of the experiences of this tourist in Iran reveals that tourism, in its widest sense, can be experienced as ''dark'' through the consumption and performance of danger. This finding moves beyond the examination of dark tourism merely as ''tourist products'', or that frame a particular moment in time, or are merely founded on one's connection to or perception of the site.Research limitations/implications -Whilst the authors recognise the limitations of the case study approach taken here, and as such, generalisations cannot be inferred from the findings, it is argued that there is merit in exploring critically the motivational and experiential nature of travel to places that may be considered forbidden, dangerous or hostile in an attempt to further understand the concept of dark tourism from a tourist's lived perspective.Originality/value -As the authors bring voyeurism into the debate on dark tourism, the study analyses the voyeuristic experiences of a dark tourist. In short, the authors argue that the lived and ''deviant'' experiential nature of tourism itself can be included in the discussion of ''dark tourism''.

The future of city tourism Growth of city tourism Since the rise of mass tourism in the 1960s, city tourism has consistently been one of the fastest growing segments of the travel phenomenon in countries with developed economies (