Dr Rodanthi Tzanelli presents research at Lancaster University

Dr Rodanthi Tzanelli, Associate Professor of Cultural Sociology, has presented her research 'Dark Leisure: On Gendered and Racialised Atmospheres of Terror in Contemporary Capitalism.'

The presentation, which took place at Lancaster University's Centre for Mobilities Research (CEMORE), focused on staged 'kidnapping' experiences - packages provided to adventurous consumers of fear who are voluntarily subjected to kidnapping and captivity by professional artists working for this emerging industry of theatrical terror.

The purchase of such experiences by Western individuals suggests their interpellation as ‘extreme’, ‘dark’ leisure within a broader tendency of contemporary capitalism to co-opt and commoditise terror and suffering.

Dr Tzanelli's research explores how the ecological aesthetics and terror atmospheres involved in the staging of such ‘confrontations’ with uncertainty are designed as inherently white, Western, Eurocentric and masculine.

In particular, she interrogates the meaningful absences and/or presences of gender and race in this paradoxical leisure activity as an entrenched feature of the ways racial and gendered identities are mobilised and circulated in global markets as ‘objects’.