ABSTRACT
In Margaret Atwood’s novel Bodily Harm, a Canadian travel writer, Renata “Rennie” Wilford, journeys to a fictional Caribbean island, “St. Antoine”, to recover from a mastectomy and the breakup of her relationship, as well as to escape the “faceless stranger” who broke into her Toronto apartment. This chapter argues that work in tourism studies offers important tools to understand this novel and its place within the context of “reality” tourism. It looks at the way that Margaret Atwood’s novel critiques conventional tourism, offers a dark parody of “adventure tourism”, and prefigures the emergence of “reality tourism.” Rennie’s life is threatened because she refuses to acknowledge her own involvement—as a travel writer, a woman, and a Canadian—in the imperialist violence of tourism. Yet it is Rennie’s “massive involvement” with a fellow woman prisoner that infuses her with a radical sense of agency.
