Annals of Tourism Research 101 (2023) 103619

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Annals of Tourism Research

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tourism-research

Research article

Tourism research with ‘double-eyes’: A selfless epistemology

Chloe Preece a,⁎, Pilar Rojas-Gaviria b, Victoria Rodner c
a
ESCP Business School, 527 Finchley Rd, London NW3 7BG, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
b
Birmingham Business School, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
c
University of Edinburgh Business School, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Phantasmagorical contexts, wherein the ineffable and the quasi-mystical emerge through en-
Received 7 May 2022 counters with the material, the mediated, the sensual and the affectual, have received consid-
Received in revised form 17 June 2023 erable attention in tourism research, bringing into view absent presences. However, their fluid,
Accepted 21 June 2023
evanescent, transcendental, and often uncomfortable atmospheres make them an easy target
Available online 13 July 2023
for exoticism. Reflexivity has been widely highlighted as a way to avoid exoticising, colonial ap-
Handling Editor: Goulding Christina proaches to knowledge production. Despite the recent focus on reflexivity and calls for deeper
reflexivity, there has been little attention on how reflexivity can be achieved. This paper draws
on the Kyoto School and their philosophy of ‘nothingness’ to develop different epistemic
Keywords:
groundings for more messy, embodied and situated tourism research. A selfless epistemology
Atmospheres
Decolonisation is illustrated through a process of learning, unlearning and re-emerging to see with ‘double-
Embodiment eyes.’
Nothingness © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Kyoto school
Reflexivity

“You don't just incorporate a spirit, you incorporate a universe […], I see the same world with other eyes” (Adão, spirit medium,
Priest of Umbanda).

Introduction: ‘Knowing without a knower’

The phantasmagorical has long been a seductive context for tourism researchers; whether focused on spirits and spiritual tour-
ism (Moufakkir & Selmi, 2018; Singleton, 2017; Willson et al., 2013) with promises of transcendence, the myths fuelled by imag-
ined geographies (Gao et al., 2012) or the mysticisms and hauntings of the past (Goulding et al., 2018; Inglis & Holmes, 2003)
rendering the invisible, visible. In seeking to understand these magical, ephemeral, yet at times, dangerous, atmospheres which
often hide uncomfortable histories, there is a need for further attention to the unfamiliar, hidden, subaltern and neglected; as
Goulding et al. (2018, p. 25) put it: “absence is not simply a case of what is not there.” In this paper we propose a novel onto-
epistemological approach to opening up to these absent presences. We draw on numerous recent studies in tourism to consider
multiple ways of doing and performing research and outline three analytical dimensions to self-detachment (learning, unlearning

⁎ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (C. Preece), [email protected] (P. Rojas-Gaviria), [email protected] (V. Rodner).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2023.103619
0160-7383/© 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
C. Preece, P. Rojas-Gaviria and V. Rodner Annals of Tourism Research 101 (2023) 103619

and emerging with ‘double-eyes’) through a reflexive focus on the researcher as both subject and object, for a broader and more
encompassing perspective on our research.
Recent studies have widened our field of view in considering the ‘affective atmospheres’ in which we do research (Preece
et al., 2022; Saxena, 2018). This is the result of a focus on more-than-representational approaches (Scarles, 2010) such as:
more embodied forms of research (Farkic, 2021; Pernecky & Jamal, 2010; Varley et al., 2020), close attention to the body as a sen-
sorium (e.g. Jensen, 2016; Wilson et al., 2019 on sonic research; Madzharov, 2021 on olfactory research and Jensen et al., 2015 on
the multisensory), further consideration of our emotional states (d'Hauteserre, 2015; Pocock, 2015) and even, more-than-human
approaches (Chakraborty, 2021; Haanpää, Salmela, García-Rosell& Äijälä, 2021). Yet in taking these types of approaches, there is
an ever-present risk of exoticising these atmospheres and the tourism field, in particular, has been attentive to the injustices and
privileges inherent in research (Lamond, 2021). As Strega and Brown (2015, p. 13) argue: “arrogance abounds in […] perfor-
mances of expertise, as does a sense of entitlement to ‘know the Other’ and access marginalised communities.” We go even fur-
ther and suggest that this arrogance is often present even when accessing our own communities, as we blindly perpetuate the
role of the researcher as egotistic expert.
This risk has been widely noted, particularly in the decolonial tourism literature (Chambers & Buzinde, 2015; Everingham
et al., 2021; Grimwood & Johnson, 2021; Higgins-Desbiolles, 2022) with rising calls for further reflexivity. Indeed, Crossley's
(2021, p. 207) recent paper suggests that reflexivity as the “practice of reflecting on the conditions that enable and constrain
the production of research in order to contextualise and qualify findings” is now widely accepted as standard methodological
practice for qualitative research. Despite this wholesale agreement on the need for reflexivity, how to actually achieve such reflex-
ivity has not been adequately dealt with. In fact, Crossley (p. 206) argues that reflexivity is not sufficient and that ‘deep reflexivity’
is required to extend reflexive practice “to include critical reflections on the researcher's emotions, embodiment and unconscious
process that may impact on research.” While Crossley takes a psychosocial, individual approach, we take a step back in order to
ask what a ‘selfless’ approach can offer.
Indeed, to avoid an egocentric approach towards our research, there is a need for self-detachment or ego-effacement to create
space for openness and non-judgemental curiosity. For this, we draw from the philosophical enquiries of the Kyoto School and
focus specifically on the work of Kitarō Nishida (1870–1945) who was the unintentional founder of the School and whose
work influenced subsequent generations of philosophers (Davis, 2019) and Tadashi Nishihira, a contemporary thinker who has
translated this philosophy to the realm of education focusing on unlearning and no-mind-ness (Nishihira, 2015). Turning to the
East allows us to move beyond Western epistemological dualism structured through the fundamental ontological opposition be-
tween subject and object of knowledge which permeates much of the current tourism literature.
At the heart of Nishida's (1965–66) philosophy of ‘nothingness’ is the standpoint of ‘seeing without a seer’ or ‘knowing with-
out a knower.’ Through Nishida's philosophy, we seek to understand the possibilities of a nondual mode of engagement with the
world and the things in it through a noncognitive bodily activity and affective comportment (Krueger, 2008). For this, we must
consider how the self can radically dissolve its ‘selfness’ or become a non-egocentric self. According to Nishida, we can alter
the structure of our embodied relationship to the world and other people through creative activity, providing for an other-
directed openness while acknowledging the situated nature of our agency (Grosz, 2014). We argue this is essential in order to
avoid the epistemological pitfalls which (perhaps unintentionally) arise from centring the researcher and marginalising the
researched.
While recent tourism research has embraced reflexivity in the form of focusing on the reflexive awareness of researchers as
subjects (Ivanova et al., 2021), with a concomitant focus on positionality, engrained biases, entanglements and deep-rooted as-
sumptions, acknowledging that our “lives, experiences and worldviews impact on our studies” (Crossley, 2021, p. 208), there
has been less attention on the researcher as object as noted by Kerr and Stewart (2019) (p. 47): “despite the acknowledgement
of researchers as both subjects and objects, social theory is rarely used to analyse the researchers as objects.” Nishida's (1987)
understanding of how subjectivity and objectivity intertwines offers us a self which is more permeable to forces from without.
Subjectivity can only arise alongside intersubjectivity, so our own bodily self is dependent on others and it is through our body
that this otherness and intersubjectivity is made known. The body is therefore not “merely a thing that relates to other things.
Rather, it is relatedness itself” (Krueger, 2008, p. 222). While this relationality is central to other later phenomenologists such
as Merleau-Ponty (1962), Nishida argues that this relational aspect of our body can be developed in that it is part of a wider at-
mosphere in which it can be transformed through unexpected encounters, generating new insights. We build on this deeper mo-
dality of relatedness to understand a different way in which we can relate to others in our research, not through new subjective
orientations (Viken et al., 2021) but rather through a self-detached orientation whereby we recognise our self as researcher as
both subject and object. This self-detachment implies not only recognising our own finitude (cf. Heidegger's being-towards-
death) but a “radical destruction of the sense of individual identity” (Kopf, 2012, p. 86); the egotistic self must be broken through.
Chambers and Buzinde (2015, p. 1) have called for an “‘other’ way of thinking, being and knowing about tourism” and perhaps
spirit possession, as the opening quote from a spirit medium at the start of this paper illustrates, can provide us an insight into
such ‘other’ ways of seeing and knowing the world. In spirit possession, spirit mediums experience a temporary sense of self-
discontinuity known as ‘dissociation’ which shifts “attention away from ordinary self-awareness” (Seligman, 2010, p. 304) and
makes space for a “powerful immaterial being” (Seligman, 2014, p. 5) – a spirit, god or ancestor. As a phantasmagorical context,
spirit possession is preoccupied which presencing the immaterial, mystical and previously erased (Stoller, 1997). While this study
is conceptual rather than empirical and we cannot do justice to the rich socio-cultural context of spirit possession in this paper,
we use selected quotes from our previous research on spirit possession in Brazil to translate the ‘selfless epistemology’ we pro-
pose; that is, how new forms of knowledge can emerge by detaching from and letting go of the self through a long-term,

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C. Preece, P. Rojas-Gaviria and V. Rodner Annals of Tourism Research 101 (2023) 103619

embodied process of unlearning (Espírito Santo, 2017). As a living tradition embedded in culture, spirit possession helps elucidate
more concretely how Nishihira's (2015) concept of ‘unlearning’ unfolds. As the opening quote exemplifies, spirit possession pro-
vides us with a vocabulary with which to consider tourism research from the perspective of a selfless self.

Groundwork for a selfless epistemology in tourism research

While we wish to resist being prescriptive in setting up our selfless epistemology, it is useful to consider the types of ap-
proaches, methodologies, theorisations, relationships, forms of authorship and presentation already in existence in the tourism lit-
erature which are favourable to such an epistemology. In mapping our current understanding of these diverse forms of knowledge
production, a few points are worth noting. First, it is clear that particularly in relation to qualitative research, the critical turn
(Ateljevic et al., 2013) has helped to foster methodological pluralism and further contemplation of the epistemological underpin-
nings of tourism research which forms the foundation for calls for further reflexivity in researcher positioning. We note that em-
bodied and creative methodologies, in particular, seem conducive to this mandate for reflexivity. Second, as well as a widespread
call for reflexivity, this body of research also shows a renewed interest in questioning power relationships between researchers
and the researched, often expressed through decolonial perspectives. We turn to each of these tendencies in order to lay the
groundwork for a selfless epistemology which bridges the gap between these two areas of heightened interest and attention.
We argue that a selfless epistemology will respond to these calls by decentring the attention from the researcher's supremacy
to the understanding of research always being done within an affective atmosphere in which the researcher's body is a tool simul-
taneously impacting and being impacted.

A call for reflexive tourism research

Although the tourism field still produces “a significant body of qualitative research written from a position of supposed objec-
tivity, detachment and disembodiment” (Crossley, 2021, p. 207), an avowal of the need for reflexivity emerges quite clearly across
much of the current qualitative tourism literature. The type of reflexivity put forward is “‘personal’ or ‘positional’ reflexivity” fo-
cused on the subjectivity of the researcher, as noted by Crossley (2021, p. 207). This requires the researcher to take into account
their own values, beliefs, experiences, etc. and how these shape the research. The overall assumption in these papers, however, is
that reflexivity is just another step in the research process, relatively unproblematic if willingness allows. Furthermore, due to a
lack of space in research outputs, reflexivity is often relegated to a few sentences in the methods (Jeffrey et al., 2021). However, as
Chang (2021, p. 7) argues, “despite a researcher's best intentions, we might not always be aware of our personal and cultural
biases.” A simple statement of positionality in our methodology, we argue, is therefore insufficient; reflexivity needs to be centred
within all aspects of the research journey to account for the atmospheres of research in which the research takes place.
A few studies (Crossley, 2021; Lai et al., 2015; Pritchard et al., 2011; Tribe et al., 2012) have put further emphasis on reflex-
ivity, centring it as a more complex undertaking. In particular, Crossley (2021, p. 207–8) notes the need to extend reflexivity “to
include critical reflections on the researcher's emotions, embodiment and unconscious processes.” This is important in that it
more directly acknowledges the vulnerability inherent in reflexivity and the discomfort which lies in exposing one's prior orien-
tations and how this can successfully disrupt the researcher's “control over the research process, challenging them to confront un-
comfortable moments of uncertainty, doubt and failure” (p. 210). Yet, the focus of all of these studies, including Crossley's, is still
firmly rooted on the researcher as subject, centring the researcher's self. While we do not wish to suggest this is not needed, we
advocate that there is also a need to consider the researcher as object, detaching from the self in order to avoid simply becoming
complicit in reproducing the social structures and power relations of academic research. By negating the self, more relational and
collective forms of knowledge can emerge. This becomes clear in considering the power hierarchies inherent in the research pro-
cess.

A call for decolonising tourism research

Beyond a focus on the imperial legacies of the tourist experience itself, recent literature has turned towards our own role as
tourism researchers (Chambers & Buzinde, 2015) and how we can avoid colonising knowledge. This entails, in particular, a focus
on how researchers extract ‘data’ from communities and leverage these for career advancement “with little benefit flowing to
communities studied” (Grimwood & Johnson, 2021, p. 12). As Grimwood and Johnson note, knowledge production practices
are bound to historical and contemporary workings of colonialism, Eurocentric masculinity and a sense of entitlement towards
the Other. The politics of representation in tourism studies (and indeed further afield) is a sensitive and delicate matter:
decolonial studies justifiably ask who has the right (and who does not) to represent others (Everingham et al., 2021). There is
an uneasiness in who can understand topics such as poverty, vulnerability, racial, gender, ableist and other forms of stigma and
in how this is presenced and expressed in our research. It is clear that there is a need for adequate consideration and consultation
with the communities in which we do research and avoidance of the extraction of Other epistemes and resources for imperial
benefit (Viken et al., 2021). However, as Grosfoguel (2007, p. 213) argues, “the fact that one is socially located in the oppressed
side of power relations does not automatically mean that he/she is epistemically thinking from a subaltern epistemic location.”
Indeed, Chambers and Buzinde (2015) claim that decolonisation does not occur simply by including Other academics into the
mainstream. Kerr and Stewart (2019, p. 35) highlight how the power relationship between researcher and researched “always
places the researcher in a position of privilege.” The need to embrace disorientation (Lozanski, 2013) and disrupt top-down,

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expert forms of knowledge production (Ivanova et al., 2021, p. 7) “towards more collaborative, dialogic, and community-oriented
forms of knowing and doing” has been acknowledged. We propose that a selfless epistemology can support researchers in wid-
ening the focus beyond the subject positioning of specific researchers to further account for the range of complexities within the
research atmosphere in which the research takes place. In other words, a selfless epistemology recognises that it is only through a
more holistic focus on the atmosphere that we can challenge our understandings and theorisations.
A host of creative, disruptive methodologies have been suggested as way to begin dismantling dominant colonial, neoliberal, hege-
monic and linear forms of knowledge production. These seek to move beyond the mainstream lines of inquiry and debate and range
from more embodied forms of research (e.g. walking methodologies, Duignan & McGillivray, 2021), more playful (Lalicic & Weber-
Sabil, 2021; Wengel et al., 2021) and creative, arts-focused approaches (Rydzik et al., 2013; Wright, 2021), more community-engaged
forms of research (e.g. para-ethnography, Duxbury et al., 2021; collective memory work, Grimwood & Johnson, 2021) and academic ac-
tivist tactics (Chang, 2021; Lamond, 2021). All of these methodologies are acknowledged to be “messy” (Duxbury et al., 2021, p. 333;
Tomassini et al., 2021) and risky, particularly given the institutional and epistemological academic structures on which tourism studies
is built (Butowski et al., 2021). In addition, another body of literature has started adopting a wider scope in considering the unpredictabil-
ity of the more-than-representational (e.g. Freidus & Caro, 2021; Jóhannesson & Lund, 2017; Madzharov, 2021; Saxena, 2018; Jensen
et al., 2015; Goulding et al., 2018; Melis & Chambers, 2021; Lovell & Griffin, 2022; Jensen, 2016; Wilson et al., 2019) and more-than-
human worlds (Äijälä, 2021; Chakraborty, 2021; Haanpää et al., 2021; Higgins-Desbiolles & Bigby, 2022; Valtonen et al., 2020) which
have the power to influence the research process and the researcher's role. This also ruptures dominant ways of knowing, incorporating
more fluid ways of engaging with tourism-related phenomena and transcending the “Eurocentric dualisms of nature and culture, human/
non-human/spirit” (Everingham et al., 2021, p. 1).
This plethora of attempts to destabilise conventional power relations associated with academic expertise provides a range of
tools with which to uncover some of the hidden and more nebulous histories and forces which have become obscured due to
comfortable colonial logics (Grimwood & Johnson, 2021). It is clear that invisible presences (Goulding et al., 2018) haunt tourism
research. Indeed, tourism is, we argue, an ideal context in which to consider nothingness as it is embedded in the study of the
historical, the intangible, the phantasmagorical and the Other. It is evident that a colonial domination has silenced many sources
of wisdom in seeking to avoid difference. We thus build on this varied body of tourism research, demonstrating that although
these diverse methods and theories are often relegated to the side-lines as an ‘other’ way to do research, they are essential in
recognising the role of the researcher as object as well as subject. As Kerr and Stewart (2019) note, the ‘hyphen’ between Self-
Other which is at the heart of our research is rarely treated symmetrically. We turn to the Kyoto School to uncover how a
focus on the atmospheres of research in which the researcher acts as both subject and object can facilitate a selfless epistemology
which is more cautious, more tentative and more humble. The Kyoto School's conceptualisation of atmospheres of nothingness
allows these invisible presences to emerge by making space through a process of self-dissolution.

Conceptualising nothingness

Nothingness has largely been neglected in Western thought. When it has come into focus, it has been defined as the absence of some-
thing. Due to a “preoccupation with positively defined objects, actions and identities,” nothingness has generally been perceived nega-
tively as a void, a non-identity or inactivity (Immergut & Kaufman, 2014; Scott, 2018, p. 15). Recent turns towards the affective and
non-representational have, however, broadened this outlook by paying more attention to what is invisible and absent within the present
(Goulding et al., 2018) and how this can be a productive area of research. Despite these efforts, Eurocentric assumptions, underpinned by
self-other dichotomies (Immergut & Kaufman, 2014), remain implicit in these studies. Exploring alternative epistemological positionings
can therefore reveal new forms of – and ways of – knowing. In this paper, we focus on the Kyoto School, a group of philosophers that
emerged in the early 1900s and whose philosophies are often characterised as ‘philosophies of nothingness.’
While the fundamental philosophical question of the West is ‘what is being?’ Eastern thinkers, drawing heavily from Buddhist
traditions, have asked ‘what is nothingness or non-being’? Significantly, nothingness or emptiness in this sense is not separate
from or opposed to ‘being.’ According to this perspective, selfhood is not a thing but a process, a process that is not separate
from the experienced world but a reflexive dimension of it, through which it obtains its unity. The self thus becomes an explan-
atory device of constant becoming. Instead of saying ‘I see the world in front of me,’ we can say ‘the world is inside me’ – as well
as around me – but as inside me, as constituting what I call my consciousness, the world is actually both apprehended and re-
shaped by me, as well as all other humans, as we co-express the world (Maraldo, 2019). Nothingness is not a ‘self’ in the
sense of a subject standing over an object, any more than it is an ego with its own interested categories of perception. Western
attempts to describe the world rest on the unquestioned assumption of a radical dichotomy between subjects and objects, be-
tween knowers and knowns. The self-awareness of nothingness must be that of ‘seeing without a seer’ or ‘knowing without a
knower’ (Nishida, 1965–66). As a field-theory, it takes the background as the real foreground, the real subject. The impermanent,
and unsubstantial is that through which we apprehend the true reality, which is nothingness. Nothingness is therefore not a (neg-
ative) lack of being, but as the background to a (positive) conception of reality as change. This philosophy acknowledges that ev-
erything is caught in a flux of different meanings and perspectives and offers us an alternative lens through which to theorise
ourselves as researchers or ‘knowers’ and the atmospheres in which we do research as the ‘background’ to our research.
It has been noted that it is “very difficult to bridge the gap between Buddhist spirituality and the rational, secular forms of
Western philosophical discourse” (Sevilla-Lui, 2021, p. 245). The Kyoto School were, however, responding directly to Western philosophy
while drawing from the rich intellectual traditions of Japan, making them a valuable way into Eastern conceptions of nothingness. The
logic of nothingness thus emerges out of an attempt to combine a Western ‘logic of things’ with an Eastern ‘logic of heart-mind’

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(Wargo, 2005). The origin of the notion of ‘absolute nothingness’ is in Eastern spirituality but it is posited here as a foundation for phil-
osophical thought. By reviving traditions of the East, the Kyoto School show that there is no fixed outer reality and that a subject-oriented
logic is insufficient foundation for an adequate description of reality. In fact, Nishida (1965–66) argues that no basic epistemological the-
ory which assumes the subject-object distinction can provide an adequate account of the whole experience. The Japanese term for ‘ab-
solute’ literally means a ‘severing of opposition’ (Davis, 2019). Nishida shows how, by attempting to localise reality in a particular
category as we do in Western epistemological dualism structured through the fundamental ontological opposition between subject
and object of knowledge, we end up with a one-sided, biased viewpoint.
While traditional Western thought has treated nothingness as a vacuum or negativity, Nishida posits nothingness as neither passive
nor static, but constructive and creative. Nothingness or emptiness, according to Nishida, is therefore not something outside of and other
than ‘being,’ rather, it is united to – and identical with – being. Nishida's goal is to articulate a theory of one unified reality that sublates
difference between subject and object (1965–66). This reality is comprised of oppositions that occur within a unity – they are co-
constituting. Unity is therefore not static but rather active; it develops of itself and brings forth oppositions from itself. In this way a deep-
ening and enlarging of experience is achieved through multiple-self negations by bringing a greater range of experience into the unity
(Wargo, 2005). While recent studies in tourism have generated new insights into the more-than-representational and co-constituting
oppositions at play in tourist experiences (e.g. Goulding et al.'s, 2018 focus on absence and presence and Varley et al.'s, 2020 consideration
of place and non-place), we focus on how these can be embodied to achieve a ‘non-positional awareness' in accounting for the atmo-
spheres of tourism. This self-negation is not ‘transcendent’ as characterised by, for example, Sartre whereby transcendence remains
centred on the ego but rather, is “transdescendent” (Sevilla, 2016, p. 643) and manifests in mundane, everyday life, yet momentarily
cuts through this ordinariness whereby the egoistic self is broken through.
We build on this rich philosophical history to move beyond Western epistemological dualism. In proposing our selfless epis-
temology, we consider in particular, the embodied and the relational in cultivating self-detached tourism research. Nishida (1978),
much like Merleau-Ponty (1962) after him, claims that it is not in the intellect but rather in pre-reflective bodily action that we
can realise a nondual relation with the world. While Merleau-Ponty's embodied perspective emerges from a positional self, Nishida, in
contrast, explores the possibilities of a non-positional ‘selfless’ embodied perspective. Nishida thus departs from an ‘egological’ approach
shared by several philosophical schools of thinking in the West (Kopf, 2012). He posits that reflective consciousness or discursive thought
is not sufficient for true self-awareness, what is required is an ‘acting-intuitional’ body. We draw on this concept of action-intuition to
understand how this form of embodiment can be cultivated to further open up (and open us up to) the atmospheres in which we re-
search tourism. Acting-intuition is a bodily relation to the world-space so that “we ‘see’ things by acting, and things determine us and
at the same time we determine things” (Nishida in Arisaka, 2001, p. 206). It is through action-intuition that we can achieve true reflex-
ivity, where the body serves as a ‘union point,’ melding us into the world so that self and world are mutually interpenetrating and there is
nothing left over (no self or object) outside of this unity (Nishida, 1990). We must therefore conceptualise the body as fluid and open-
ended: the body penetrates and is penetrated by the world as it moves and acts. There is no fundamental distinction between internal
and external so the body-as-subject and body-as-object are in dialectical interplay (Krueger, 2008). Due to this fluidity, there is no
fixed self but rather an emerging, porous self which is the product of body-world relation. The self-in-action is dynamic and impermanent
and we therefore must embrace the spontaneous and unexpected, following our intuition in investigating the mysterious in our research
atmospheres. In setting out our selfless epistemology, we turn to the work of Nishihira and in particular his discussion of the living tra-
dition of ‘unlearning’ within Zen philosophy.

Selfless epistemology

Drawing on Nishihira (2015), we set out a three step process for tourism researchers to cultivate self-detachment within the atmo-
spheres of tourism research: (1) learning, constructive acquisition of a set of skills with a focus on the object of learning (2), unlearning, a
more difficult task which requires self-emptying by releasing or surrendering what one had previously worked hard to acquire, here the
focus is on the self in order to forget oneself (3) emerging with ‘double-eyes,’ whereby unities are found within opposites through being
in-relation, where the focus is on the wider context (in our case on the atmospheres of research). It is important to note that these are not
unidirectional steps in a linear process but rather form an endless cyclical process of deconstruction and reconstruction (see Fig. 1). Our
epistemology is not an end state but a constantly reaffirmed willingness to negate and reconstruct. Therefore, although each step is ex-
amined separately here for analytic and illustrative purposes, these various practices must be taken in conjunction. In demonstrating the
value of this epistemology for tourism research, we bring together an ensemble of dynamic, multi-dimensional, embodied ways of
researching and knowing from the existing tourism literature in order to illustrate what these seemingly ‘alternative’ ways of knowing
actually allow us to know. To demonstrate this more concretely, we also use illustrative quotes from spirit mediums to consider how re-
searchers can operate as ‘mediums’ for epistemic decolonisation, seeing with ‘double-eyes.’

Learning: Ego-self

“Sometimes the Exu [a messenger spirit] isn't crooked and we get a bit crooked during the ‘gira’ [spirit possession ceremony].
Why is that? It's our energy clashing against his. It's a short-circuit, and the energy gets a little distorted.”

[(Fausto, spirit medium, Priest of Umbanda)]

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C. Preece, P. Rojas-Gaviria and V. Rodner Annals of Tourism Research 101 (2023) 103619

Fig. 1. An illustration of the cyclical process underlying a selfless epistemology.

Learning as a skill-acquiring process is familiar to us. As researchers, we go into the field and actively attempt to learn about
different tourism contexts. The process is generally considered to be a constructive, ascendent one whereby we acquire new
knowledge and embodied patterns to accomplish certain tasks. The more proficient we become, the more expert we are, at
which stage these skills and competencies start to feel like a ‘natural’ part of the self (Nishihira & Rappleye, 2022). For example,
in her study of outdoor tourism exploration, Farkic (2021, p. 230) discusses the work involved in getting her “body attuned to a
hitherto alien environment” and transitioning from an ‘indoor’ body to an ‘outdoor’ and eventually ‘researching’ body. Learning in
this sense is therefore about accumulation, ‘filling our cup’ (Sevilla, 2016). It represents a solidification of knowledge and a mas-
tery and control over knowledge. While this process of learning is essential, the Western reliance on expertise results in a self-
absorption, noted in the recent calls for decolonising epistemologies. Indeed, neoliberal academia is widely held to be built on
hegemonic, masculine and colonial forms of knowledge which require the knower to attribute success primarily to themselves
as autonomous and self-efficacious experts (Butowski et al., 2021; Chambers & Buzinde, 2015; Cunliffe, 2022). As Cunliffe
(2022, p. 10) argues, this leads to “myopic self-referentiality” as witnessed through numerous calls for reflexivity which them-
selves lack any reflexivity.
Chambers and Buzinde (2015, p. 2) note that Western self-reflexivity, although well-meaning, is “still complicit in the profane
conventions of Enlightenment thinking and failure to acknowledge the limitations of this condition means that it is hardly possi-
ble for any sort of effective intervention in emancipatory discourses.” This is, we argue, due to the focus on the researcher's self as
subject. As this wilful self is busy with the projection of its own desires within an illusionary agentic supremacy, it lacks an ap-
preciation for itself as an object. This ego-centric self experiences “itself as an independent yet isolated individual, existing only
for-itself, locked in its private word.” (Kopf, 2012, p. 90). Therefore, the perceiving ‘I' (subject) is sharply distinguished from the
perceived ‘thing’ (object and product of knowledge) (Nishihira, 2015). The limitations of this approach have been acknowledged,
for example, Farkic (2021, p. 234)’s discomfort in attuning to the environment leads to an embodied recognition of the more-
than-human world and the “messy condition” of working in affective research atmospheres. We see this also in the quote from
Fausto at the start of this section. In learning to become a medium, a long period of skill-building which requires training is nec-
essary. Yet, training alone is not enough, there is a need for flexibility, fluidity and openness in order to allow yourself to ‘feel’ the
spirit and for possession to occur smoothly. This requires overcoming the subject-object divide, in this case a distinction between
the medium (self) and spirit (other). The self, according to Nishida, can only be revealed due to the co-dependent origination be-
tween I and Thou, requiring self-detachment and more embodied and relational forms of knowing. It is in the encounter that one
emerges as a particular meaningful expression of oneself (Kopf, 2012). It is worth noting that while in the Western view, knowl-
edge is conceived of as ‘in the mind’ as the throne upon which reason sits and in opposition to the body, in the Eastern context
the mind is a more comprehensive term for the cognitive, affective and imaginative (Nishihira & Rappleye, 2022), allowing for a
more holistic perspective.
Discomforts and vulnerabilities in our research are generally not acknowledged as they are not in line with conventions of ac-
ademic writing and the strictures of our journals. Crossley (2021, p. 209) suggests that this is one of the reasons why reflexivity is
often perceived as “predictable, formulaic and stripped of its power to disrupt and enhance analysis.” Yet, it is clear that it is the
examination of this very discomfort which is needed in order to confront and reveal the biases and assumptions implicit to our
research processes and scientific routines. The ways in which we generally approach the field, collect data, theorise and author

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our research, all create a sharp distinction between subject and object resulting in rigid, stratified and closed ways of knowing.
There is therefore a need to go beyond learning, as Sevilla (2016, p. 645) argues: “a full cup is particularly problematic in a
world where we constantly encounter new cultures and new situations that require us to have the space to accommodate new
contents in our cup.” A more fluid, ongoing and less fixed reflexive process towards knowledge creation is required. We need
to ensure our knowledge is not solidified but rather is making space for new learnings, allowing us to adapt without attachment
to the fixity of our previous horizons of experience (including the deep-rooted dualities of subject/object, self/other). This neces-
sitates the ego-detachment which unlearning can offer so that it is not about an ego-centric, solidified researcher who consoli-
dates knowledge and stops learning but rather, a more malleable, porous and humble researcher. In contrast with the Western
egologic view, ‘knowing without a knower’ requires abandoning individual concerns and ambitions to make space for processes
of knowing while becoming within atmospheres of research. In this way, we can perhaps move past a fixed expert identity and
acknowledge our relationship to an unfinished world where the centre is everywhere, all at once.

Unlearning: No-self

“The drumming quickens and her once flowing movements suddenly become less graceful, heavier. She appears to tumble on
her steps, losing the rhythm, missing the beat, she now needs to prop herself up uncomfortably, hands on her knees. Within
seconds, it appears that she has aged 30 (or maybe 130) years as she swiftly ‘becomes’ the Preta Velha [an old black slave spirit].
Her human helper is soon by her side, handing her a knotted wooden cane, dressing her with rosaries and a straw hat, and lead-
ing her to a nearby stool, where the medium-old slave woman lights up an antique-looking pipe. In this persona, she is now
ready to offer her words of wisdom to those that have come here for her guidance.”

[(Fieldnotes, São Paulo, Brazil, 2019)]

In grounding itself in discomfort, vulnerability and failure, unlearning stands in sharp contrast to the positive ascent of the skill
acquisition process which forms learning. Although unlearning is a difficult concept to grasp, particularly as the skills learnt be-
come embodied, it is evident that struggle is part of the process of knowledge seeking. To learn, therefore, we need to face the
possibility that there is something we cannot understand and often, we are required to realise the incompleteness or wrongness
of our previous approach thus making space for new perspectives (Sevilla, 2016). Making space is not a calculative, functional ac-
tivity but rather a learnt spontaneity. It is through doubt, frustration, perplexity and crisis that struggle can be productive and the
self can break through. Furthermore, certain types of knowledge are implicitly uncomfortable (for example, the realities of life for
disadvantaged or exploited communities, see Freidus & Caro, 2021; Grimwood & Johnson, 2021). Unlearning thus requires self-
denial by moving beyond skills and “‘casting off body and mind’, allowing oneself to let go of the constructs by which one
both comprehends reality and separates oneself from reality” (Sevilla, 2016, p. 643) so that the field (inclusive of the atmo-
spheres) in which we are embedded, is made present, accounting for the invisible and the ephemeral. We draw on Nishida's con-
cept of action-intuition as a bodily relation to the world-space to further unpack unlearning as a movement towards “trained
unconscious[ness]” (Sevilla, 2016, p. 644) which allows for ego-detachment.
Action-intuition is a creative process as, in the act of knowledge creation, we do not know in advance what will emerge. Our
experience of being an embodied self, according to Nishida, emerges from the dialectical interplay of the body-as-subject and the
body-as-object. A continuous “rhythm of negation” is needed between subject and object (Sevilla, 2016, p. 647) for the self to be-
come more malleable and allow for possibilities of creative-transformation. Nishida (1973) uses the example of the skilled pianist
who is at one with their piano and can play without thinking so that the artist and instrument are momentarily one. This is not
mechanical movement but is adaptive and context-sensitive. This is why learning and skills alone are not sufficient for a virtuoso
performance. After a long period of learning and imitating, relying only on skilfulness results in stiffness (Nishihira, 2015). One
must be able to express these skills spontaneously, without any attachment to them (Sevilla, 2016) That is, the instrument
plays itself, the ‘I' of the musician is extinguished into the object of the instrument and simultaneously, the instrument is totally
negated and only the musician is left. The boundary between the subject (musician) and object (instrument) has dissolved. This
does not mean that the musician has forgotten themself or is unconscious but rather that there is an intense awareness of union
with the instrument as a ‘supra-consciousness' whereby “the self has coalesced into the amalgamated subject of ‘self-music’”
(Nishihira, 2015, p. 3). Similarly, in the case of spirit possession, as noted, medium-training alone is insufficient; in order to
feel the spirit, an openness is required which comes about through ritualistic techniques such as chanting, dancing and drumming
resulting in a ‘flow’ or meditative state as described in this section's opening quote. Through this process the socio-material ob-
jects such as the Preta Velha's cane, straw hat and pipe are not so much props but rather, they allow the spirit to emerge, enabling
the medium to overcome the self-other boundary. Nishida (1973) thus presents self and world as ‘co-implicated’ so mind, body
and world are interwoven within the forms of our embodied agency. Through action-intuition, the world-engaged body realises a
nondual mode of relatedness with the world and things in it (Krueger, 2008). This type of bodily cultivation for action-intuition
demands focus – it is only when the body is entirely focused on one activity that it is at “one with its world” (Nishida, 1978,
p. 227).
The ‘subject’ of the unlearning process is not a thinking self of the type of Descartes’ cogito but the sentient body in relation-
ship to an unfinished world. A self-detached researching positionality (or more accurately, non-positionality) means actively ‘let-
ting go’ of preconceptions and trusting our researcher training in following our intuition as to what is significant in the

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atmospheres of our research, making space for other subjects and objects and being flexible and responsive to these atmospheres.
We follow Ingold's (2011, p. xii) call for further integration of the ‘external’ into our research: “why do we acknowledge only our
textual sources but not the ground we walk, the ever-changing skies, mountains, rivers, rocks and trees, the houses we inhabit
and the tools we use…?” It is through the self-detachment of unlearning that the ‘external’ can be more fully acknowledged.
In critiquing the way in which reflexivity is predominantly performed, Crossley (2021) advocates for deep reflexivity in terms
of accessing the self through introspection, the interpretation of fantasies and dream analysis. While we do not refute the value of
such an approach, we argue that this further ingrains the focus on the researcher as ego-centric subject. Instead, we follow Kerr
and Stewart (2019) in complementing this focus on the researcher as subject by duly considering the researcher as object. In fact,
although not described as a ‘selfless’ approach, Kerr and Stewart's attempt to treat researchers and researched more symmetri-
cally as both subjects and objects is an excellent example of unlearning. In this particular case, they disrupt conventional ways
of doing research by drawing on the same theory to analyse the researcher as well as the participants studied. Their study illus-
trates why embodied and creative methodologies are essential in allowing researchers to detach their egos: they implicitly ac-
knowledge the vulnerability of the researcher. These methods allow our (researcher) selves to become objects or instruments
of research and allow other objects and subjects to emerge as subjects of knowledge. They allow us to unlearn our research hab-
itus (Everingham et al., 2021) in line with decolonial approaches. Yet this takes practice, is uncomfortable, and requires a contex-
tually contingent approach for a more relational ‘space of betweenness’ rather than absolute claim to knowledge. Again, Farkic's
(2021, p. 237) embodied study demonstrates how, through her body being challenged and tested, new relations with research
participants could emerge: “I was feeling seasick and mentally exhausted, like everyone else was, yet in these moments the re-
search, in its conventional shape and form, was hardly possible.” As a result of these circumstances, researcher and respondents
shared vulnerabilities, emotions, somatic knowledge and haptic spaces of encounter. This goes far beyond reflexivity as simply
positionality and acknowledgment of one's privilege or biases in the field. Through the body, the familiar self is suspended or ab-
sent. Similarly, bell hooks (1995) demonstrated the power of art in de-familiarising the familiar and problematising the taken-for-
granted. Participatory arts-based research has been shown to have transformative potential in tourism research (Rydzik et al.,
2013; Scarles, 2010), however, again, this research has always originated from a researcher as subject of knowledge perspective.
Through a selfless self, Nishida sheds light on how we can construct relational understandings in which all parties are seen as
both subjects and objects simultaneously, much like our spirit mediums. Through a dynamic dialectic of self/other we can expe-
rience the limits of other bodies, this does not put us in our respondents ‘shoes’ as per empathy but provides us with momentary
insights into how our atmospheres of research reveal the privileges and disadvantages our bodies hold. A white body will never
fully understand a black body or a rich body a poor, however we advocate that through a process of active non-positional aware-
ness we can train our bodies to be more open to understanding while still acknowledging that there are no absolutes but rather a
plurality of potentialities. Rather than seeking to close down and delimit our horizons of knowledge, we must seek to disrupt and
open them. A research approach ‘made by making’ allows for doubt which is generally unacknowledged in our research papers
yet which befits a more ‘humble’ (Saville, 2021) research stance (Everingham et al., 2021). It requires the abandoning of any pos-
sibility of ultimate truth (Sevilla-Lui, 2021). As decolonial theorising shows (Viken et al., 2021), fully understanding the Other will
forever escape our body and understanding is an infinitely deferred process. Lee (2017) demonstrates the harm caused to black
bodies through violent objectification in highly egoistic accounts of tourism knowledge. Relatedness is obtained by acknowledging
that we cannot truly know the interiority of another. We must therefore unlearn (Higgins-Desbiolles, 2022) and be more open to
not entirely understanding and not wholly knowing.
Knowledge contribution does not require, therefore, a specific body or history. It does, however, require an openness of one's
body to be trained as a ‘sensorium,’ or ‘an instrument of research’ (Rojas-Gaviria & Canniford, 2022). Our research advocates that
what is most significant is not who does the research but rather how they approach and work within the atmospheres in which
that knowledge can emerge. In our cultivation of research atmospheres, we suggest all bodies must prepare in order to avoid the
interpellation and the ego-politics that Grosfoguel (2007) claims is inherent to Western knowledge construction. While the more-
than-representational has been embraced in tourism research to challenge Western dominant views (e.g. Jensen et al., 2015), it
has not fully achieved its aim. We argue this is because while it has moved away from the object and processes of objectification,
there is also a need to move away from the subject. Until non-object and non-subject are achieved, there will always be repre-
sentation. As our illustration from spirit possession shows, our body is not always ours in the way we consider it to be so in
the West, we can open up and become connected to the world around us in multiple ways.
In echoing calls for unlearning (Everingham et al., 2021), we advocate a move away from paternalistic empathy for the Other
which occurs within a clear hierarchy, towards radical compassion (Bollmer, 2017) through an active, non-positional self-
awareness which embraces openness, change and uncertainty. However, this process is discomforting and requires constant im-
provising (particularly at odds with the certainty which is expected in our grant applications, for example) as we are no longer an
agentic body in control but are in a more vulnerable position having renounced authority: we are acting, creating and participa-
tive, affecting and being affected, transforming and being transformed and are open to absent presences. We must take the risk of
letting others in; this means not just a larger-than-self perspective or a ‘decentring’ but taking a step further with a no-self or
selfless perspective whereby vulnerability becomes a common ground. As Lovell and Griffin (2022, p. 15) show, “creating open-
ings requires destabilisation.” This destabilisation is the nature of unlearning within the context of nothingness. Destabilisation
emphasises the constant transformation from the familiar to the unfamiliar and the pushing of the boundaries of our (researcher)
habitus as the subject in charge of the research. Rather than definitive answers, by letting go of intentionality and expertise we
can further understand the intentions of other subjects that operate on us and reconnect with them by facing emptiness.

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Destabilisation also involves the recognition that, at times, our most precious skillsets and reputations can also become constraints
in the process of our researching.

‘Double-eyes’: True-self

“Because now I realise that there are more entities here who love me, who wish me well, who are with me. I don't walk alone in
the world. What else? You don't need anything else. It's already great now, see: I didn't have anyone, now I have Caboclo [an
Amerindian spirit], I have Preto Velho [an old black slave spirit], I have criança [a child spirit], baiano [a Bahian spirit], boiadeiro
[a cowboy spirit], Pomba-Gira [a gypsy spirit], Exu [messenger of the deities (Orixá)], Oxalá [Orixá of faith], Oxum [Orixá of love],
Oxóssi [Orixá of the hunt]…” (Adão).

Self-realisation occurs through a state of creative inspiration which integrates learning and unlearning, constructing and
deconstructing simultaneously, culminating in what Nishihira describes as re-emerging through ‘double-eyes,’ a sort of rebirth
“beyond dichotomies” (Nishihira & Rappleye, 2022, p. 1334). It is only when both ‘I' and ‘Thou’ relate to each other without mu-
tual objectification that they can recognise each other momentarily as simultaneously both subject and object (Nishida, 1987). We
must therefore embrace a ‘selflessness' by realising an ‘in-between’ identity as self/other are co-implicated within our atmo-
spheres of research. Selflessness therefore requires both the radical negation of the self and the expansion of the self to include
the actual world so that the “self expands, [and] a larger and deeper self” emerges (Nishida, 1978, p. 228). Rather than positioning
the self as an expert researcher who has knowledge, we must acknowledge ethical affective nondual relationships which have
“nothing to do” with the self but rather “involve being open to being affected by that which one cannot know or feel”
(Ahmed, 2004, p. 30). Mediums learn to trust the immaterial, agentic forces that they allow in and remain open to being guided
by spirits, entering into intimate, long-term relationships as their selfless self expands to incorporate diverse spirits, their histories
and knowledge (Seligman, 2010; Stoller, 1997), as illustrated by the opening quote to this section. Their bodies move from indi-
vidual ego to a rich complex of living narratives authored by these other ‘entities.’
Having ‘double-eyes’ results in a new perspective whereby one can perceive autonomous events but see them as part of the
same dynamic process or perceive autonomous entities but see them as mutually co-constituting. This does not, however, mean
that one cannot demarcate difference, rather, the relations between subjects and objects that were previously assumed to be ex-
clusive, come to the fore. If we return to our example of the musician, there is neither player nor played, musician nor instrument,
the subject (player) and object (instrument) have been separated and merged in the same event and have a double or concurrent
nature whereby they can be perceived as both separated and at one (Nishihira, 2015). Both the ‘I' (player) and instrument are
negated, and both the ‘I' and instrument retain their integrity. This is nothingness as per the Kyoto School, a vast, limitless
Unity of a multiplicity of separate things. This process of affirmation-qua-negation recognises the development of collective
wisdom in which everyone emerges as being in-relation. We see this in what Preece et al. (2022) conceptualise as ‘poetic attune-
ment,’ a means of expressing the emergence of the researcher's subject positionings within affective atmospheres, foregrounding
the embodied relationality of being in the field. Attunement not only draws our attention to our body and how it affects and is
affected by its surroundings, but also unfolds the emotionality of the moment and its situatedness within the socio-historical con-
text. It therefore acknowledges both our comforts and discomforts, considering how the research atmosphere shapes us, bringing
our emotions and hidden vulnerabilities into view (Pocock, 2015) and recognising the fluidity of these.
Indeed, as Chakraborty (2021, p. 122) argues, the state of the world itself is inherently fluid and our knowledge is endlessly
being shaped and reshaped by our research atmospheres which “denies us an opportunity to identify a problem, analyse it,
and solve that same problem.” It is notable that notwithstanding the recent focus on reflexivity found in qualitative research in
tourism, there is relatively little acknowledgment of the researcher's lack of control despite long-standing critiques of experimen-
tal methods as lacking external validity. We echo Farkic (2021, p. 228) in recognising that the: “fleetingness of the human expe-
rience and the non-linearity and unpredictability of the more-than-human world have the power to influence the research
process, the messy, negotiated and often contested researcher's role has been less considered.”
Through this self-realisation process of ‘double-eyes,’ it becomes clear that knowledge does not emanate from one's ‘self’ or
from any individual performance but rather from the context (atmospheres) in which the researcher embeds themselves
(Nishihira & Rappleye, 2022). Through this widening of perspective, we can move from empathetic relatedness towards short-
lived ethical affective encounters (e.g. Kerr & Stewart, 2019). As we realise through learning and unlearning that we can never
fully know, we emerge as different researchers. As previous studies have shown (Butowski et al., 2021; Grimwood & Johnson,
2021; Lee, 2017), how we represent our atmospheres of research is vulnerable to interpretation and misinterpretation, therefore
we can only use these representations as reminders of how we as researchers perceive the event at a specific time: “actions and
identity are not to be projected at one's possibilities but to be presenced in the immediate now” (Kopf, 2012, p. 226). We must in
fact try to ‘let go’ of our egos, and present our knowledge as emerging, ephemeral and “replete with scholarly contradiction which
may never be resolved” (Pocock, 2015, p. 43). However, again, we highlight that this process of emerging with ‘double-eyes’ is
never complete and is grounded in failure. Farkic's (2021, p. 235) honest account of her own struggles in the field illustrate
the inherent contradictions and tensions which emerge:
“It was impossible to bracket what I had previously known, and what I strived to find out, and enter the field entirely tabula
rasa. Yet I was an inexperienced researcher. Having a background in the positivist research paradigm, doing research in a

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foreign land, and in a different language, all brought tensions and insecurities both prior to and during the research process.
Things were further complicated by having to conduct it in a non-native language. I had to acquire new terminology and be-
come comfortable with it, as I was what Stebbins (1998) termed an ‘ethnic outsider.’ I also found it difficult to switch between
my insider-outsider roles (Kennedy et al., 2018) – being me and me being a researcher, doing things for the purpose of my re-
search I would not have done otherwise.”

We see here how it is impossible to completely unlearn, yet through disruption, the researcher can, at least momentarily, be-
come guided by the research atmosphere (Rojas-Gaviria, 2021), much like the medium allows the spirit to guide them for a lim-
ited time.
In allowing for the recognition of complex, fluctuating invisible relations, we highlight how seeing through ‘double-eyes’ fur-
ther allows researchers to break through any temptation to exoticise; a temptation particularly relevant to tourism contexts
where 30 years on, Mies' (1993, p. 133) characterisation of tourism as a chance for tourists to “experience the challenges of
early ‘discoverers’ and to commune with nature” and exotic ‘Others,’ still rings true. The concept of the Eurocentric tourist gaze
(Urry, 1990) has generated reams of scholarship testifying to the ways in which tourism is shaped by predetermined norms
and social imaginaries and as recently as last year, Higgins-Desbiolles (2022) showed that imperialism continues to be a dominant
feature of tourism. This is particularly the case for the phantasmagorical contexts which are so enticing and which we refer to in
our illustration of ‘double-eyes’ through spirit possession. Although a context that has been regarded with suspicion as either
make-belief or demonic – particularly in the West where it is an unfamiliar practice – in considering spirit possession as an em-
bodied cultural phenomenon there is a need to understand the specific socio-historical context in which it occurs (Seligman,
2014). Rather than a spirit completely taking over the medium or the medium completely losing consciousness, the process of
spirit possession is one of knowledge production whereby, by incorporating the spirit and becoming a more malleable ‘selfless’
self, the medium emerges from the encounter with the spirit with new ways of knowing and seeing and alternative interpretive
schema. In opposition to the grand narratives of colonial authorities, Pérez (2011) argues that spirit possession offers a way to re-
create the past in communal settings, contributing to the emergence of “counter-memories” (Stoller, 1997) and lost voices.
Through these re-imaginings, the ‘background’ of certain histories are brought to the fore. This, we argue, is what is needed in
tourism research: to acknowledge how we as researchers are actively intervening and acting upon the world (affecting) within
our research and at the same time are changed (affected) as a result of the situated socio-historical products of multiple interde-
pendencies encountered that form our atmospheres of research.

Discussion and conclusion: Atmospheres of nothingness

No-mind-ness versus mindfulness

To perceive reality properly, Nishida (1965–66) argues that we must free ourselves of all limiting schema through mutual self-
negation to create openness that allows for difference. This can only be achieved through ‘knowing by becoming.’ As the tourism
literature has shown (Chambers & Buzinde, 2015; Everingham et al., 2021; Wijesinghe, 2020), central to decolonising is moving
beyond Western attempts to describe the world as a fixed outer reality which rests on the unquestioned assumption of a radical
dichotomy between subjects and objects, between knowers and knowns. Our contribution to this growing body of work rests
upon the Kyoto School's theorisations of a nondual relation with the world through which we can cultivate an “other-directed
ethical ethos” (Krueger, 2008, p. 215). In introducing a selfless epistemology, we build on previous tourism research (particularly
that which attends to the mysterious and phantasmagorical) which has brought into view some of the hidden, absent, subaltern
and neglected forces at play in the atmospheres we study for a more comprehensive and wide-ranging perspective. In attending
to research atmospheres as atmospheres of nothingness, we seek to render the invisible, visible.
We argue that despite a recent turn towards ‘transformative tourism’ with increased focus on decolonising, sustainable and
responsible tourism (e.g. Grimwood & Johnson, 2021; Grimwood et al., 2015; Sørensen & Grindsted, 2021), the vast majority of
tourism research continues to centre Western epistemologies. Furthermore, despite continued attention on representation and
who can do research in specific cultural contexts, resulting in widespread agreement about the significance of reflexivity in re-
search (Crossley, 2021), this reflexivity is similarly constrained to the Western concept of the self as a subject of knowledge stand-
ing over an object of knowledge. Inspired by Kyoto School's philosophy of nothingness, we argue that we must move beyond
reflexivity being preoccupied only with the researcher as subject. Reflexivity must also include the researcher as object for true
transformation. We thus foreground a non-Western articulation of self and identity, a selfless self. It is only by letting go of the
self that we can develop the different epistemic groundings called for by Chambers and Buzinde (2015), recognising knowledge
not as universal or absolute but rather as fragile and ephemeral. Although some studies have previously recognised the power of
transcending restrictive binaries (e.g. Amoamo, 2011; Cho, 2021) and call for hybridity, we go a step further as these studies still
centre on the standpoint of the self. As researchers we must acknowledge that we cannot distance ourselves from our own em-
bodied perspectives and privileges, rather than speaking for others, it is about further attending to how we can use our bodies to
express our research atmospheres, embrace a multiplicity of meanings, foster reciprocity (Lee, 2017) and through the multiple
negations that we encounter in our embodied experiences, express our discomforts and uneasiness (Pocock, 2015). Through self-
lessness, we propose that researchers must learn but also unlearn in order to then emerge with ‘double-eyes’ for a wider perspec-
tive which encompasses the ‘more-than-human’ and transcends the “Eurocentric dualisms of nature and culture, human/non-
human/spirit” (Everingham et al., 2021, p. 1).

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What a selfless epistemology offers us is illustrated by comparing the Japanese term of ‘no-mind-ness’ (Nishihira, 2015) with
the recent ‘mindfulness’ boom in the West (which also has its roots in Buddhist traditions but has been commercialised as an
individualised form of self-improvement). No-mind-ness is a way of being or orientation rather than an accomplishment, it carries
with it the implication of a long-term rather than short-term “human becoming in relation to others” (Mori in Sevilla-Lui, 2021,
p. 254). Failure is therefore considered useful and integral to no-mind-ness in that it is seen as one step towards self-
transformation. Within the cycle of learning-unlearning-re-emerging, there is a recognition that effort is needed in gaining skills
and yet there is also a recognition of the shortcomings of these skills, there is a need to go beyond them through a long-term
process of self-cultivation. This means that any success is not solely attributed to the self, it is not “completely of one's making”
(Nishihira & Rappleye, 2022, p. 1340), there are other forces which are acknowledged to be at play. Mindfulness, however, as
witnessed through the very profitable self-help industry which has capitalised on the term in the West, takes a much more indi-
vidualistic approach. Packaged in such a way, mindfulness provides techniques or tools for individuals to “meditate their problems
away” (Sevilla-Lui, 2021, p. 244) without addressing the source of these problems. In this sense, mindfulness is a much narrower
approach than no-mind-ness as it “has been uprooted from rich wisdom traditions and has thus lost sight of its ethical orientation
becoming a programmatic rather than pedagogical practice.”
Similarly, as tourism researchers, there is a focus on our skilfulness as experts and our papers serve to demonstrate how,
through these skills, we solidify our expertise. Meanwhile, there is very limited acknowledgment of the wider atmospheres
which both enable and constrain our research, of the need to make space for unlearning and new learning through flexibility
rather than solidity and of the need to open up to uncertainty; particularly given the complexities of challenges which we are
facing (such as climate change) which as Chakraborty (2021, p. 122) highlights, are: ‘wicked problems’ whereby “a solution at
one place can compound a problem in another location.” We must concede that our knowledge is still ‘indetermined’ rather
than “not determined at this present point” which “presumes that it can be determined in the future” (Mori in Sevilla-Lui,
2021, p. 256). This indeterminateness requires the recognition that we are not the masters of our research, but that the world
and its multiple manifestations also operate through us as researchers.
While it is a common academic duty to explain the methods, procedures and theories used in our research, the preparation of
researchers to detach themselves from their ordinary habitus as subjects and particularly – objects – of knowledge has been
largely ignored in tourism studies. Certainly, there is a need for more robust work on revealing our connections and disconnec-
tions to our research context and further transparency on our methods and the ways in which we approach representing our re-
search (Kiriakos & Tienari, 2018). We outline our selfless epistemology not as a normative, prescriptive ‘how to’ which can
guarantee a self-detached participation and contribution but rather to provoke and inspire researchers of tourism to do the diffi-
cult work of ego-detachment for epistemic decolonisation. In this way, we build on Wijesinghe's (2020, p. 9) call for challenging
our role as researchers to advance decolonial thought in tourism by moving from “facile binaries to new frames of reference, and
subjectivities.” Evidently, there is a need for further research to demonstrate the value of this selfless epistemology and how it
works in practice, this is only an initial, conceptual point of departure.

The strictures of neoliberal academia

Having proposed our selfless epistemology, we must acknowledge that such an approach is fundamentally at odds with the
realities in which we work in neoliberal academia. Indeed, in his tour-de-force autoethnographic reflection on his editorship of
this very journal, despite a recognition on the importance of cultivating “your creative self”, Tribe (2018, p. 19) uses the word ‘ex-
pert’ eight times to discuss editors, reviewers and authors. Tribe makes an excellent case for “deep knowledge about a field”
(p. 19) but there does not seem to be much space for unlearning within our academic structures. Indeed, Butowski et al.
(2021, p. 54) highlight the domination of Western ideologies and standards (particularly the Anglo-American tradition) through
the function of editorial boards of journals: “analysing the content of leading journals, we note that the dominant position is oc-
cupied (all too often) by one language, one tradition, one chosen set of research topics, and one group of scholars, who serve as
the ‘gate keepers’ or ‘power-brokers’ of tourism knowledge.” In addition, these power structures are clearly at play in the meth-
odologies chosen, theories selected and modes of writing and representation (Chambers & Buzinde, 2015). Cunliffe's (2022, p. 1)
recent paper on theory in organisation and management studies rings true across disciplinary boundaries in that “particular ways
of knowing and theorising” are “considered imperative to getting published,” these, she notes, are masculine forms of theorising.
A selfless epistemology offers a more ‘feminine’ approach in that it is based on embodied positionality, embraces multiple, con-
tradictory perspectives and is grounded in discomfort and doubt. Our ‘presence’ as researchers in the expression of our research
atmospheres cannot be avoided, even as selfless selves: “the music plays itself through the presence of the musician” (Loughnane,
2017, p. 721). While calls for reflexivity (Pocock, 2015) have raised moral concerns in terms of ethics, methods, the researcher's
‘gaze,’ responsibilities towards research participants and representation; embracing a selfless self means both accounting for our
own situatedness in the socio-historical context while simultaneously acknowledging how we are affected by the research atmo-
sphere in a more fluid way. Indeed, our positionalities are constantly shifting. By seeking to express the complex and intertwined
voices of the research atmosphere at a certain moment in time, we answer Pocock's (2015, p. 43) call for further considerations of
“the social, political, cultural and historical aspects of emotional reflexivity in tourism research” and echo her focus on “enhanc
[ing] uncertainty” and expressing the mystery of knowing through unlearning.
Throughout this paper, we have highlighted previous tourism studies which, we believe, offer an introduction into selfless re-
search. These vary significantly in terms of context chosen, methodologies undertaken, theoretical approaches and ways in which
knowledge is presented and represented. All of them, however, are arguably ‘alternative’ to the mainstream, perhaps increasingly

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C. Preece, P. Rojas-Gaviria and V. Rodner Annals of Tourism Research 101 (2023) 103619

acceptable but still very much on the margins, often requiring particular Special Issues, for example, to find a space for publication
(e.g. Ivanova et al.'s recent 2021 Special Issue on creative and disruptive methodologies which we have heavily drawn from).
What we show through our focus on nothingness, is that it is on the margins, through these more embodied, fluid, chaotic
forms of research, that we find space for unlearning, for resisting, for breaking through and for emerging with new knowledge
and ways of knowing. Our reviewers asked whether we could write this paper as a methodological paper, ultimately our answer
is we cannot, as nothingness is a wider epistemological project rather than a set of skills or techniques one can master, a distinc-
tive way of being, rather than a choice. Ultimately, our selfless epistemology is about our identity as researchers. If we are to at-
tempt to really reflect on the colonial legacies of the field and how these are perpetuated (Chambers & Buzinde, 2015), we must
disrupt our taken-for-granted beliefs and assumptions and fundamentally reframe the practices and politics of academia. We must
challenge our assumptions about what constitutes research and knowledge, what a good data set is, what a good researcher-
participant relationship is. Perhaps our best hope lies within recent discourses developing around ‘impact’ in terms of
community-engagement and knowledge hybridity (Duxbury et al., 2021). While these discourses are still heavily policed in
terms of what can and cannot be considered impact, they do pave a path towards more open forms of knowledge creation
and dissemination, more reciprocal and collective relationships between researchers and the researched and more non-linear
and open-ended forms of knowledge.
We therefore argue that creative, embodied activities should not be relegated to the side-lines in tourism research. With a
sharper sensitivity to our bodies through action-intuition we can also better acknowledge our limitations as knowers. An open-
ness to different approaches, kinds of knowledge, ways of generating ‘data’ and telling stories serves to emphasise the dynamicity
of our atmospheres of research and the impossibility of accounting for everything (Saville, 2021). Chambers (2007) argues that
even critical tourism researchers are reluctant to express a political agenda, we suggest that through self-detachment, researchers
can become aware of the limits of their selves and know through ‘non-knowing’ (Nishihira, 2015). We therefore call for further
training of the body (as well as the mind) in our research training. Furthermore, these ‘alternative’ forms of knowing should not
be relegated only to methodological approaches but should be conjoined to our theorising and our forms of expression. Indeed,
alternative forms of expression have started to receive more attention (Lee, 2017; Rakić & Chambers, 2010; Rydzik et al.,
2013); for example, both Noy (2007) and Pocock (2015) use poetry to represent the emotional complexities of their entangle-
ment with the field. There is significant potential for other forms of representation ranging from music, games (Lalicic &
Weber-Sabil, 2021; Wengel et al., 2021), role-play and theatre, dialogues, interactive, non-linear and fragmented narratives
(Lamond, 2021; Tomassini et al., 2021; Wright, 2021), videography (Äijälä, 2021; Haanpää et al., 2021), visual arts (Dabezies,
2021), walking tours (Chronis, 2015; Duignan & McGillivray, 2021) and many more. These approaches are well equipped to sup-
port us in our unlearning and are thus powerful tools in our project of self-detachment. While making an inventory of this myriad
of methods is outside of the scope of this paper, Fig. 2, conceptualised as a ‘tree’ of approaches is an example of the multiple
branches of embodied, relational and reflective contributions which have already been made in the literature. We highlight this
as an organic work-in-progress, we invite readers to further ‘prune,’ ‘shape’ and ‘grow’ this tree. Furthermore, in addition to
these methodological approaches, a selfless epistemology calls for further consideration of how object-materiality or, in fact, im-
materiality affects the expression of the research (Lovell & Griffin, 2022). We present these diverse ways of doing research as es-
sential components of a selfless epistemology in that they introduce a certain unpredictability and vulnerability, opening up the
research to further account for the atmospheres in which we are approaching knowledge production and allowing ourselves as

Fig. 2. A ‘tree’ of methodological approaches for a selfless epistemology.

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C. Preece, P. Rojas-Gaviria and V. Rodner Annals of Tourism Research 101 (2023) 103619

researchers to be mediated by nothingness. Depending on the context of research, however, certain techniques will be more ap-
propriate than others which is why we avoid a prescriptive approach.
We end by echoing the words of Butowski et al. (2021, p. 65) as they consider the cost of “lost epistemological opportunities”:
“We just need to go beyond the safe institutional (and, therefore, epistemological) walls and enter those geographic, epistemo-
logical, grammatical areas from which the academic tourist establishment has separated itself. This separation has brought,
most likely, a safe academic life, but it has led to loss in terms of our understanding of the world of tourism phenomena.”

Much like spirit mediums, in detaching from our egos, we researchers may see, feel and learn how to mediate for the absence
presences in our research atmospheres. While we argue that phantasmagorical contexts and their atmospheres are particularly
suitable for a selfless epistemology, we encourage tourism researchers to build on our work and see how this epistemology
could work in other contexts as well.

Data availability

Data will be made available on request.

Declaration of competing interest

None.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grants (SRG/170749).

Appendix A. Supplementary data

Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2023.103619.

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Chloe Preece is Associate Professor of Marketing at ESCP Business School. Her research focuses on marketing within the arts and creative industries and how this trans-
lates into social, cultural and economic value.
Pilar Rojas-Gaviria is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing at the University of Birmingham. Her work focuses on understanding the role of market intermediaries and societal
forces in constructing multicultural collective identities and solidarities.
Victoria Rodner is a Lecturer in Marketing at the University of Edinburgh and her main research areas include branding, consumer narratives, institutional change,
value creation in the visual arts market and emerging markets.

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