Journal
Journal of material cultureVolume
18Issue
1Pagination
69 - 90Publisher
Sage PublicationsLocation
London, EnglandISSN
1359-1835eISSN
1460-3586Language
engNotes
For many postcolonial countries, articulating a sense of identity and cultural nationalism has involved negotiating those histories and identities constructed and ascribed upon them by others. Indeed, such themes have long troubled many postcolonial intellectuals and been the subject of intense debates. Shanghai Expo 2010 brought this issue into focus once again, an event where national identities were performed to an audience of 73 million. This article examines the objects and architecture of cultural nationalism in relation to questions of sovereignty and enduring colonialities for a number of Asian and African countries participating in previous world’s fairs and at Shanghai. It draws on the ideas of Partha Chatterjee to interpret why they embraced a language of tradition and heritage, reproducing the same geo-cultural hierarchies familiar to the age of European empire. The author argues that, within the cultural economies of globalization today, such countries engage in a form of auto-exoticism.Publication classification
C1.1 Refereed article in a scholarly journalCopyright notice
2013, Sage Publishing
