Being Corpus: The Tourist Body as Place, Touch and Departure

Abstract

Discussions of proximity in tourism emphasise the (re)discovery of places nearby, local destinations, short distances and physical closeness. This chapter aims to (re)discover this proximity through the body. Inspired by Jean-Luc Nancy’s (2008a) Corpus, we offer a philosophical reflection on ‘the body’ in relation to proximity and consider how we might begin to think it anew. Philosophising tourism is introduced as proximatising methodology; an approach to writing and reading that touches, connects body to thought and emphasises friendship as a way of knowing and being. These philosophical reflections are presented as an expressive collage of travelling, friendship and walking the Kumano Kodo Pilgrimage Trail (Japan) in January 2023. (T)here, the touring/toured body is reconsidered through three themes: place, touch and departure. First, Corpus challenges us to rethink the body as the place of existence, opening new understandings of what it means to visit some-body. We then explore how bodies take place through touch, but a touch that exposes and extends bodies: proximity as spacing. The body, as extension, is therefore always about to depart. A departing body carries with it its spacing, including the taking-place of the Arctic as body that exposes and extends the Arctic into the experiences in Japan, and perhaps into the here, now.