[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.For without thisworld of killing, he or she no longer exists.Thus the media produce and reproduce the culture of consumption, of violence and sex to ensurethat the global economic powers, the multinational corporations can promote a global market forthemselves and protect it.And when everything is being bought or sold everyday and at all timesin this vast supermarket, including culture, art, science, and thought, prostitution can become away of life, for everything is priced.The search for the immediate need, the fleeting pleasure, thequick enjoyment, the commodity to buy, excess, pornography, drugs keeps this global economyrolling, for to stop is suicide.Fragmentation, God, and Other ThingsRestoring Old FortificationsThe end of World War II and the advent of the nuclear age spelled the end of the empire forBritain and of the colonial stage of imperialism.The result-280- file:///C|/Archivos%20de%20programa/eMule/Incoming/Stanley%20Fis.Jameson%20(Ed)%201998%20The%20Cultures%20Of%20Globalization.htmlwas the emergence of a new imperialism and a new colonialism, of the accompanyingglobalization of both markets and intervention as well as cultural control through technologicaloutreach.In my part of the world, Britain has been replaced by the United States, with Britain, France,Germany, and Japan as lesser partners.So for me, the term postcolonial conceals the realsituation, like many other words used in global politics and global culture.I prefer the wordneocolonialism because it describes the essential reality of our situation.And when we speak ofthe New World Order and of globalization I remember the Gulf war, in which Egypt participatedin exchange for the $7 billion paid to the government by the Bush administration and retrievedwithin a period of fifteen months by the United States through the lopsided trade imbalance.The period after the Second World War was a period of hope for many people.There were thosewho believed in socialism and thought it was being built in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europeand in part of Asia.There were those who believed in democracy and freedom and thought wewere on the way to achieve them.There were the nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin Americamoving more rapidly than before to independence.Today, most of these hopes have collapsedunder the assault of a global transnational imperialism.The loss of hope, the failure of movements that represented the chance of a better future or wereportrayed as leading to a better future, the deception, the difficulties of the economic situation, theattack launched by a global system on what people may perceive as their interests, their identity,their history, their culture, their nation, has evoked a reaction.In the absence of perceivedperspectives for the future, people often fall back on what they know, cling to the familiar, thereassuring, the things that made them what they are, the things of the past, not the future.Ratherthan a change forward, the reaction is backward to the closed family, the closed community, therace or ethnic group, the religion.Back to what is identity.Instead of being open, we close up likean oyster, break off, fight tooth and nail with one another, become divided.And the worse thesituation, the greater the rivalry and the more cruel the fighting.In the face of the global assault,instead of uniting as human beings we build up destructive barriers and fortifications, attitudesthat divide us, political and cultural movements that take us backward and separate us.We reviveall the old ways of thinking, the norms, the values of intolerance and discrimination.We delink,disconnect, and think in terms of rigidity and fragmentation.-281- file:///C|/Archivos%20de%20programa/eMule/Incoming/Stanley%20Fis.Jameson%20(Ed)%201998%20The%20Cultures%20Of%20Globalization.htmlFor many of us, these are the roots of communal, ethnic, racial, and religious conflicts andconfrontations, the essence and the message of such movements.It is a protest movement, a movement of peoples protesting by going backward rather thanforward.And like any protest movement, it can be used by economic and political groups, bythose who lead the power game, utilize the hopes, the passions, the despair of people for their ownpurposes.This is the source of the religious revival, the return to God, of fundamentalism in the Arabregion, in India, in the United States, and in many other places, the source of the religiousmovement back to dogmatism, intolerance, and dehumanization rather than toward a progressiveliberalization of religious teachings.It is a political and cultural movement that merits extensivestudy because of its repercussions, but that so far does not seem to have excited the interest ofscholars in the arts and literature, in the humanities, or in gender studies.What is true offundamentalism is also true of the ethnic and racial revivals in different parts of the world,especially Eastern Europe.Two Faces of the Same CoinIf we look at the world scene today, we can observe a movement from above for economicconcentration and centralization, for unification, a unification that is to the advantage of the few,the very few, at the expense of the many, coupled with a progressive marginalization andpauperization of many people in the North but mainly in the South.In the political arena, the scene is different in some ways.Processes of political unification aretaking place in Europe and Asia; the United States is unified and is expanding its economicborders to Canada and Mexico through Nafta, but this unification is taking place at the top.At thebottom, in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, there is increasing disunity.This is alsothe case for many parts of the South such as Africa, the Arab region, and, to a lesser extent, LatinAmerica.Eastern Europe is on its way to becoming a part of the South economically, politically,and culturally.In the cultural field, the process is similar to that in the political field.The spread of global cultureis the necessary corollary of a global economy and a global market, but there is also an oppositemovement leading to increasing cultural division and fragmentation, which is related to anincrease in ethnic, racial, communal, and religious conflict.The movement toward a global culture might seem to be contradicted by-282- file:///C|/Archivos%20de%20programa/eMule/Incoming/Stanley%20Fis.Jameson%20(Ed)%201998%20The%20Cultures%20Of%20Globalization.htmlthe other movement toward cultural division, fragmentation, and strife.My contention is that thereis no real contradiction
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]