Ancestral echoes in dark tourism: Exploring descendants' meaning-making and transformation

This study explores how descendants of trauma survivors engage with dark tourism destinations and how socially inherited memory shapes their meaning-making and transformative experiences. Drawing on Postmemory Theory and Transformative Learning Theory, the research explores how inherited narratives of trauma intersect with embodied encounters at sites associated with ancestral suffering. Using a qualitative phenomenological design, in-depth interviews were conducted with 13 descendants of trauma survivors who visited trauma-related locations across Mexico, conceptualized as a dispersed dark tourism destination. Data were analyzed thematically to understand how inherited memory, emotional engagement, and place-based encounters shape descendants' interpretations of the past. The findings reveal that socially inherited memory anchors identity and motivates visits to trauma-related destinations. Encounters with these sites generate intense emotional and affective responses that prompt reflection on ancestral histories and contemporary identity. For many participants, these experiences function as transformative moments that reframe inherited trauma into commitments to remembrance, heritage preservation, education, and social responsibility. The study contributes to dark tourism scholarship by demonstrating how descendants' engagements with trauma-related destinations extend beyond curiosity or commemoration to involve embodied processes of meaning-making and transformation. By integrating Postmemory and Transformative Learning perspectives, the research advances understanding of how intergenerational trauma is reinterpreted through place-based encounters within dark tourism contexts.