Globalization I-3:

Hybridity

and Reflexive

Postmodernism

What have we learned so far?

Travels in Time and Space/Escape (Illusion of Realism) Somewhere in Time

Authority (Self-Justification) in story-telling The Tempest

Costume Drama Derek Jarman’s The Tempest

National Trauma told “indirectly” (from the margins)

Historicity gained thru’ Juxtaposition

暗戀桃花源 ; Stuntman

Nostalgia films (thru’ stereotypes): In Country, Forrest Gump

Themes: History

Other themes: race relations; racial stereotypes and identities; War & Trauma: collective and individual

What have we learned so far?

(Foucault) History as discursive constructions.

(New Historicism/Cultural Materialism) Re-definition of text and context. textuality or con-texts.

(Postcolonialism) : re-visioning the colonial past; nation as narration; mimicry and hybridity

(Postmodernism): reality as fiction; exposing fictional boundaries, crossing the other boundaries. pastiche; flattened subjectivity or aesthetic/cognitive reflexivity

Critical Movements

What have we learned so far?

Colonialism post-colonialisms (socially specific)

Nation-States neo-colonialism and/or globalization

Organized Capitalism disorganized capitalism; overall commodification

Modernity Postmodernity and economic/media globalization

High Modernism– hybridization and global cultures.

Global movements –increasing diversification or fragmentation

Some Questions . . .

Is contemporary globalization a form of cultural imperialism?

Is it ok to develop one’s style(s) with the signs from global culture? (Say, wearing bell-bottoms without being a hippie, dancing hip-hop without knowing Afro-American culture.)

What do you think about the following example? (You can change the TV program into one on Taiwan made by a Dutch or British company.)

There was this Englishman. . .

who worked in the London office of a multinational corporation based in the United States. He drove home one evening in his Japanese car. His wife, who worked in a firm which imported German kitchen equipment, was already at home. Her small Italian car was often quicker through the traffic. After a meal which included New Zealand lamb, Californian carrots, Mexican honey, French cheese and Spanish wine, they settled down to watch a programme on their television set, which had been made in Finland. The programme was a retrospective celebration of the war to recapture the Falkland Islands. As they watched it, they felt warmly patriotic, and very proud to be British.

(Williams, R. (1983). The Year 2000 (p. 117). New York: Phantheon. Originally published as Towards 2000, London: Chatto & Windus).

Outline

Three Views on Globalization (next time: The World interconnected in our experience of risk and trauma)

Creolization and Hybridity –examples Aesthetic Self-Reflexivity –examples ( New Social Movements; not our focus) For Next Week . . . Reference

Three Views on Globalization: 1. Cultural Imperialism

1. (refuted on p. 115)2. a new form of Empire: Empire By Michael Hardt and

Antonio Negri Empire= a singular system of global governance; not

a system of discipline but that of command. "sovereignty has taken a new form, composed of a s

eries of national and supranational organisms united under a single logic of rule. " (xii).

“It is a decentered and deterritorializing apparatus of rule that progressively incorporates the entire global realm within its open, expanding frontiers. Empire manages hybrid identities, flexible hierarchies, and plural exchanges through modulating networks of command. The distinct national colors of the imperialist map of the world have merged and blended in the imperial global rainbow” (xii-xiii).

Globalization: 2. Interactions between the Global and the Local

1. Interaction between the global and the local: dialectic; disjunctive and multiple fronts; contrapuntal ( 對位 )

2. New Hybridity or Creolization = on both the levels of consumption (esp. of fashions, foods and music) and identity/cultural production (p. 118-119)

3. “Rhizomorphic ( 球莖式 ; decentered and expansive growth with nodes) and disjunctive global flows are characterizable less in terms of domination and more as a forms of cultural hybridity. “ (117)

4. But are any forms of cultural hybridity constructive or active?

Globalization: 3. Aesthetic Reflexivity in Economies of Signs

(Scott Lash and John Urry)1. Rapid production and spreading of signs by c

omputers, television sets, VCRs and hi-fis; 2. Two possible outcome:

1) blasé, anomie: bombarded and incapable of attaching meanings to them;

2) Aesthetic reflexivity: abilities to use the signs and create with them meanings of one’s self and society.

Globalization: 3. Aesthetic Reflexivity

Aesthetic reflexivity defined:a. Signs = detachment (disembeddedness) fro

m their original contexts aestheticization of material objects

re-embedding. (re-creating their social meanings)

b. “If cognitive reflexivity is a matter of 'monitoring' of self, and of social-structural roles and resources, then aesthetic reflexivity entails self-interpretation and the interpretation of social background practices.”

Aesthetic Reflexivity—another view

Jameson: overall commodification lack of critical distance

Lash and Urry: prevalence of signs reflexivity in choice of signs and reconstruction of meanings.

It is always there in arts and literature, just in different forms.

In postmodernism, the ‘signs’ of self-reflexivity = ‘author/writing,’ ‘reader/reading,’ frames in the texts, or any other ‘peripheral’ and artificial elements (camera, books, language, stage), etc.

These signs “can be” overdone, or floating in the texts, or in mass media, without constructing any self-reflexive meaning or the ‘social.’

Examples of Hybridization of Culture: 1. Glocalization on consumption level

Sea food pizza in Taiwan, no beef burger in India or pork burger in Muslim countries.

rice burger, burger with Japanese flavors, etc. 燒餅 with salad; mango sandwich, etc.

McDonald’s in Taiwan: different use of space McDonaldization of Society: (the process by which the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society as well as of the rest of the world. ) standardization (or Calculability, Control, Predictability, FAMILIARITY)

Examples of Hybridization of Culture: 2. Cultural Appropriation

Mu Lan; Evita, Mummy Returns, Enigma + 台東阿美族豐榮部落長老郭

英男 ’ Return of innocence’ -- 1994年風靡全球， 1996 年奧運特別指定曲。

The popularity of Indian foods. (e.g. the case of 孫燕姿 )

Examples of Hybridization of Culture: 3. Cultural Critique

The diaspora writers: e.g. 曾廣智 Tseng Kwong Chi （ 1950—1990; Hong Kong Canada Paris New Yor

k ）（選自《東方遇見西方》 With the classic Mao Tse-Tung suit, dark eyeglasse

s and an identity tag stamped "SlutforArt". . . . he inserted himself in stereotypically touristic sites, from the Eiffel Tower to Kamakura, Japan, from the Statue of Liberty to Hollywood, CA, ricocheting between nature and culture to develop a massive series of self portraits entitled the Expeditionary Series or East Meets West. issues of cultural identity, tourism and tourist photography.

Source: http://www.stephencohengallery.com/artists/Tseng/Tseng.html

Disneyland, California 1979

Tseng Kwong Chi

Gelatin Silver Print - 36 x 36 inches Printed 1997 Edition of 9

Statue of Liberty, New York; L'Arc de Triumph, Paris

Examples of Hybridization of Culture: 4. Cultural Revitalization

霧鹿布農族傳統歌謠 (and their polyphonic singing style 複音 ) 與美國著名大提琴家 David Darling 合作《 Mihumisa(n)g 祝福你》專輯 -- 是全世界音樂家少見的現場採集、編寫和錄音模式 (source: 1, 2)

Darling’s experience of cultural communication: regretting not taking the cigarette offered by the chief.

國語歌詞 ku-isa tama lang（織布歌）

“laug” （勞烏 - 男子名）去哪？去採菜拿來做什麼？用來擦槍為什麼要擦槍？要打山羌為什麼要打死牠？要給” puni” （撲尼 - 女子名）吃

為什麼要給她吃？因為她常織布為什麼要織布？要給孩子穿為什麼要給他穿？因為天氣冷（齊唱）大家一起去漂亮的大瀑布

Examples of Hybrid arts

Paul Simon’s Graceland (with Ladysmith Black Mambazo and the innovative a cappella 清唱 vocal harmonies of mbube music.—light rhythm, like footsteps)

Paul Simon’s act against Apartheid.

Graceland (1988)

Examples of Cosmopolitan/Hybrid arts (2)

Yo Yo Ma "Soul of the Tango" "Obrigado Brazil" Chega de Saudade –

“"Saudade" is a uniquely Portuguese word for "longing" that has no direct English equivalent; the music, however, says it all. ” (sample from Amazon)

Lambarena-Bach to Africa

Sankanda + Lasset Uns Den Nicht Zerteilen

Examples of Self-Reflexive Arts

The Canvas of Time: (Jacque Leduc) 時光畫布

Desperanto (or "Let Sleeping Girls Lie" Patricia Rozema)

陳姍妮 監視

Examples of Self-Reflexivity as meaningless signs in popular culture

MTV channels – 妹妹看 MTV,

MTV’s commercials

Music video: “If”

For Next Week . . . 1. Japan’s militarism:

1894—1st Sino-Japanese war; 1900- 八國聯軍； 1914— 山東青島； 1927— 山東濟南； 1931— 瀋陽（九一八事變）； 1932— 上海； 1937—2nd Sino-Japanese war ( 蘆溝橋 ) ； 1941—WWII --all under the imperial ordinance of the Emperor

Saipan ( 賽班島 )——where the Japanese air force flew to attack Pearl Harbor; where the Enola Gay (the B-29 bomber) took off for Hiroshima

1944, when the U.S. marines landed, 25,000 Japanese and 4,000 American died in just a few days. A mass suicides of hundreds of civilians, mostly women and children.

For Next Week . . . 2. Atomic bombs dropped in Japan

“Little Boy” --the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima 廣島 on August 6, 1945.

“Fat Man” --dropped on Nagasaki 長崎 August 9, 1945. Causes of damage: air pressure (wind), heat, radiationDamages: A. Hiroshima 1. wind: destroyed most of the houses and buildings within a

1.5 miles radius. death: more than 140,000 people died by the end of the year

(including students, soldiers and Koreans who worked in factories within the city.) The total number of people who have died due to the bomb is estimated to be 200,000.

B. Nagasaki--70,000 people died by the end of the yearC. 1945, Aug. 15, Japan surrendered (treaty signed on Sept. 2).

Taken over by the U.S.

For the Next Few Weeks . . . Our focus

1. First experience of the bombing in the three stories

2. (Impossible) Recollection of WWII, and Hiroshima

3. Reconstructions of a Community

(not discussed) 3. the decline of its imperial system

Japan and the emperor 天皇的神聖性；戰後，裕仁天皇 declares that he is not divine 人間宣言

Background: 幕府時代——武人專制 明治天皇— institutionalization of emperor system— 天皇

直接指揮皇軍 (actually a 15-yr-old boy examples of Japanese militarism— 神風特攻隊； sepuku New Constitution written by the Allied—the emperor 「日

本國民統合的象徵」

Reference

Lash, Scott and John Urry. Economies of Signs and Space. London: Sage, 1994.