ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a tentative and impressionistic investigation into the violence of non places; one in which the baleful ghost of Kurtz is never far from the surface, drawing on a selection of textual, cinematic and ethnographic spaces. The non-place, by reckoning, represents a heterotypic space of violence inasmuch as the potential of such is rarely far from reach. In setting out to explore the violence of non places the aim of this chapter is not to contribute towards a spatial taxonomy of violence insofar as, symbolic or otherwise, it might be held to constitute one of the defining attributes of non places. Moments of violence, however fleeting or evanescent, invariably leave a trace, whether physical or emotional. The theme of violence provides an instructive means by which to explore the experiential spaces of travel and tourism. The violence of non places is the disruption of the habitus of place.
