Are You Enjoying Our Linguine?

In this piece at The Dial, Francesco Pacifico writes about Rome, tourism, empire, global capitalism, and the American travelers that fuel this machine—walking around, “discovering” neighborhoods, and finding meaning in foreign places and overseas cultures on their own time. This is super sharp, funny, and depressing all at once. Believe me when I say it is incredibly hard to quote only two sections below.

Put another way, they’re playing a videogame called knowledge, and we’re its nonplayer characters. Reality starts glowing as soon as they learn a new thing. Before the learning, it is dark; we don’t exist. That’s the main aspect of an empire surveying the land. American tourism is a part of America’s intelligence work. Even if, for the individual tourist and their family, it is often just a prize for a year of hard work.

“They’re here, but they’re not here. See how they’re talking now? The tone of their voice? They have passed their judgment on the place, and then they’ll leave and will never know where they were. And yet, even if they’re not here, their arriving to this neighborhood signals that the place is changing. They have arrived. And if they have arrived, the cold brew will arrive. And still, they have no idea about this place where they sat and ordered coffee.”