Defacing: affect and situated knowledges within a rock climbing tourismscape

Rock climbing is frequently constructed as a tourism practice that exemplifies rational, solo, masculine quests to conquer the natural world. This paper troubles such gendered norms through an investigation of Southern Ontario's Niagara Escarpment (Canada) as a space of climbing tourism. Drawing on actor-network theory, our aim is to situate the drifts and dissolutions of affect through the narrative capacities of rock climbing. Specifically, we engage with the Escarpment as a rock climbing tourismscape to illuminate the unexpected and productive qualities of affect in rock climbing, a process we describe as defacing. Defacings reconfigure how climbing feels, shift perceptions of conservation and sustainability away from human interests, and ultimately alter climbers' relationships to natural spaces, prompting ways of knowing and being that trouble masculinist, rational conventions. In the context of welcoming creative solutions for promoting sustainable tourism, we illustrate how attending to the affective capacities of climbing can foster new, interesting, and vital possibilities.