The Other Magic Kingdom: New Orleans Voodoo and Tourism

This dissertation looks at the symbiotic and inextricable relationship between New Orleans Voodoo and the city's tourism. Early nineteenth century travelogues mark the Voodoo performances in Congo Square as "must-see" attractions for any visitors to New Orleans. While tourism seemed to serve as a "safe" space in which to observe the spectacle of Voodoo, within popular culture, Voodoo was vilified, coding the practice as aberrant and "black." Ironically, both tourism and popular culture serve to preserve Voodoo's continuance and prominence in the Crescent City. The popular culture imagery engaging Voodoo works to create an enticingly ominous aura to which members of the tourism industry provide innocuous access. Some claim that the version of Voodoo tourists encounter to be a rendering constructed specifically for a white audience, however, this adaptation of Voodoo has come to inform and shape that which is practiced in the city, even if only in reaction to these representations. While the study deals predominantly with the contemporary, much archival research and historical analysis serve to provide an examination of New Orleans Voodoo's dynamism in mass media, travelogues, and material culture from the 1800s to the present. This work utilizes textual, media, and visual culture analysis, critical theory, surveys, participant-observation, and interviews to explore the respects in which people encounter information about New Orleans Voodoo and how it impacts their Big Easy vacations. Chapters in this dissertation specifically look at the construction of New Orleans as a numinous space in early newspaper reports and travelogues and the ways they have worked to affect the city's destination image, while providing a fertile space for the development of Voodoo; how popular culture texts employing Voodoo reveal anxieties and desires Americans have regarding anti-colonialism, crime, the Other; the performance, production, and commodification of Voodoo in New Orleans tourism; Marie Laveau and African American cultural heritage tourism; and Katrina's effect on the deterritorialization and reterritorialization of Voodoo in New Orleans. Each of these chapters work in conjunction with one another to emphasize the inseparable nature of New Orleans Voodoo and the city's tourism while revealing the racial and religious power struggles central in them.;This dissertation investigates New Orleans Voodoo and its place in the city's tourism. While some scholars have suggested that Voodoo in New Orleans is merely a tourist commodity, by tracing the history of the religion and the development of tourism in the Crescent City, it can be determined that the two have been integrated since their inception(s). This research employs tourism studies, ethnography, critical race theory, folklore, and textual analysis. An investigation of the place and space of New Orleans determines that the socio-cultural and historic positioning provided a fertile location for the flourishing of Voodoo and tourism. Examining the Voodoo mediascape chronologically provides insight to the anxieties and desires of Americans through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, while it boosts the appeal of Voodoo tourism in New Orleans. But because New Orleans Voodoo has always been entrenched in tourism, part of the religion's authenticity lies in its commodification. Additionally, an exploration of tourism in New Orleans reveals a gap in African American heritage tourism where Voodoo and its leaders (specifically Marie Laveau) might be. Finally, the study ends with speculation on the future of New Orleans Voodoo and tourism.