Journal | Lagoonscapes
Journal issue | 4 | 1 | 2024
Research Article | Big Cruise Ships Going Feral: An Ecocritical Reading of Overtourism in Venice
Big Cruise Ships Going Feral: An Ecocritical Reading of Overtourism in Venice
Abstract
The problem of big cruise ships overtourism in Venice is examined with an ecocritical approach, through two novel concepts: Feral entity and Plantationocene. The first one is adopted to describe big cruise ships as other‑than‑human subjects benefitting from human‑built infrastructures to spread beyond human control, becoming undomesticated. Such ferality is evident in some of their attributes, such as being uncontainable, creating a toxic environment or producing legacy effects. Plantationocene, instead, is used to depict the cruise ships‑induced touristic monoculture affecting the city, highlighting its major characteristics, namely that of global circulation of humans and capital and the homogenisation, simplification and exploitation of eco‑social landscapes.
Submitted: April 8, 2024 | Accepted: June 20, 2024 | Published July 24, 2024 | Language: en
Keywords Touristification • Anti‑tourism movement • Ferality • Touristic monoculture • Plantationocene
Copyright © 2024 Irene De Giorgi. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/LGSP/2785-2709/2024/01/007
