http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3 http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-2.xsd
interpretive study of a silent space in cultural tourism
The Comanche nation was one of the many nations of Plains Indians annexed to obscure geographical regions where they still exist as modern subjects although greatly reduced in cultural solidarity, autonomy numbers and power compared to when they roamed the Llano Estacado, as The Horse People. Yet they are still represented, through signifying channels of media, as past, as they may have never been. This dissertation addresses the modern objectivity of rational thinking: an acquisitive disposition that reduces that which is philosophically, ideologically and socio-culturally deferent to signs bearing signifiers of "otherness.'' Sociology, anthropology, cultural studies and some philosophies in science frame the discourses of modernity as a temporal, ideological and social predicament where emphatic belief in progress maintains that the perceived world can be assimilated through 'development', while simulated through technologies of [re]production. Tourism is a modern social event created from an amalgamation of transportation, communication and information that moves masses of people to any place - to gaze - to find amusement in these assimilations and simulations of cultural deference; those people who are singly and collectively made to stand against a backdrop of ''otherness.'' This dissertation connects tourism to the ' cultural situation of modernity and academic discourse in order to observe how and if "othered" groups in Texas (in this case, Comanches) have been assimilated, simulated or annihilated by the effects of the touristic apparatus and the actual tourist events it supports. Have Comanches suffered ideological and operative violence at the hands of European settlers over the past 200 years? And at the hands of private and public shareholders in the tourism industry, has such violence extended into continuing historical, social and ideological killing performances of otherness ? Where are the voices of Comanches now? Do they sleep in silence upon their land, now called Texas?
"Major Subject: Recreation, Park and Tourism Sciences".
Issued also on microfiche from University Microfilm Inc.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 365-388).
Major recreation, park and tourism sciences