Post by preterite on Oct 18, 2012 13:47:41 GMT -5
I think it's interesting to think about how local artifacts representing ideologies of cultural nationalism can transcend their local valuations and contexts in their moments of non-local appropriation: so Starbucks in the Forbidden City and how it's managed speaks to who appropriates the value of the sign "Starbucks in the Forbidden City" in the process of its production as sign, its distribution, its use (i.e. in a presentation at an academic conference), and its re-production (i.e. in the ways other might cite it as an academic example/argument) or its de-production (i.e. in its erasure down the memory hole). Who's appropriating the value of that sign at those various stages? Starbucks, the Chinese Communist Party, the government clerk responsible for negotiating with the Starbucks franchise, the American tourist, the Chinese tourist, the worker in front of the Starbucks? How might we take a closer look at how those various parties are valuing, laboring, contributing to the value of that sign?