Capital cities as open-air museums: a look at Quebec City and Tunis

摘要

This paper presents the results of a comparative study of the national capitals of Quebec and Tunisia, Quebec City and Tunis, respectively, both of them being recognised World Heritage Cities and internationally renowned tourist destinations. For the purposes of this paper, our analysis deals specifically with heritagisation and touristification policies in these two cities, especially with policies that lead to their museumification through the promotion of practices and aesthetic values that transform them into open-air museums. These practices and values include outdoor exhibits, walking tours and historical circuits, day- and night-time festivals, and celebrations, with an emphasis put on 'the old town' in the creation of national and historical frames of reference for those activities. We draw on this perspective to examine the identity-and nationalism-based discourse that underlies such practices, together with their resulting representations. This leads us to conclude that in a context of globalisation and interactions alternating between local and global realities, national capitals make significant use of their tourist clienteles to assert their particular identity and so demonstrate to their own community, and to others outside, the role they play as 'symbolic capital' assets.