Explorations in banality: prison tourism at the Old Melbourne Gaol Laurajane Smith To appear in: J.Z. Wilson, S. Hodgkinson, J. Piche and K. Walby (eds), The Palgrave Handbook of Prison Tourism, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Introduction I’m glad I wasn’t born then. It was a very cruel time…um…I don’t know, that’s about it. (OMG002: female, 45-54, accountant, Anglo-Australian) 1 I don’t feel a personal connection here at all. Like I don’t walk in here and feel any more Australian. (OMG091: female, 18-21, student, Australian) If, as Mercer (2010:1) argues, ‘feeling is believing’, then the emotional states and experiences engendered by heritage and heritage tourism will significantly influence the meanings, values and messages individuals will construct or have reinforced as they engage with heritage places. There is now an extensive literature that argues emotions are central not only to cognition, but also equally importantly to the social and political judgements individuals make (Marcus 2002; Marcus et al 2007; Sayer 2007; Wetherell 2012). Indifference is an emotional state, sometimes involving an active choice of refusing to exercise empathy and compassion, and sometimes denoting blithe, but socially meaningful, lack of awareness. It influences the legitimacy given to particular values deployed by 1 Throughout this chapter, interview quotes are referenced by field number and basic demographic information: OMG refers to the Old Melbourne Gaol and the following number is the sequential field number given to the interview. The ethnicity and occupation are self-defined by the interviewee. In the quotes, the use of … refers to a pause by the speaker, while […] refers to the excision of text to enhance clarity. 1