Pa ar rt t 1 1: : T Th he eo or ri ie es s, , P Pr ra ac ct ti ic ce es s, , a an nd d A Ar re en na as s o of f C Cu ul lt tu ur ra al l I Im mp pe er ri ia al li is sm m P I Im mp pe er ri ia al li is sm m a an nd d C Cu ul lt tu ur re e, , P Pa ar rt t 2 2 Se es ss si io on n 3 3 S Cultural Imperialism: History and Future Cultural Imperialism: The Political Economy of Cultural Domination Enrique Dussel and Ali Shari’ati The German Ideology How to Read Donald Duck 1
Part 2, Cultural Imperialism: History and Future, Introduction: pp. 31-32 On GOONATILAKE : “cultural imperialism on a global scale is characterized by an imposition of a cultural package against the informed will of the recipients” “Historically,” this has been done by the force of arms—Catholicism in colonies On NANDY : “the project of imperialism gradually dissolved after World War II, it was never quite fully dismantled” 2
Chapter 2, “Cultural Imperialism: The Political Economy of Cultural Domination,” by Bernd Hamm: pp. 18–30. Cultural imperialism = colonization of consciousness Is it just Americanization? Cultural imperialism, “touches on almost all aspects of life” Cultural imperialism is not autonomous, it “is a by-product— sometimes intended, sometimes unintended, but always inevitable— of political and economic imperialism” Structural Adjustment Policy: “This is cultural imperialism in its most rabid, most direct form” The media capture minds (p. 27) “Selective diffusion modifies the general thesis without rendering it superfluous” “cultural intrusion seems to work along the hierarchy of power structures” 3
Chapter 18, “Enrique Dussel and Ali Shari’ati on Cultural Imperialism,” by Abbas Manoochehri: pp. 290–300. MANOOCHEHRI “Mimic Men” Dussel: “geopolitical space” “Imperialist culture” = “culture of the centre” 4
Marx, Karl. (1932[1846]). The German Ideology: Critique of Modern German Philosophy According to Its Representatives Feuerbach, B. Bauer and Stirner, and of German Socialism According to Its Various Prophets . “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance .” 5
“The division of labour, which we already saw above as one of the chief forces of history up till now, manifests itself also in the ruling class as the division of mental and material labour , so that inside this class one part appears as the thinkers of the class (its active, conceptive ideologists, who make the perfecting of the illusion of the class about itself their chief source of livelihood) , while the others’ attitude to these ideas and illusions is more passive and receptive , because they are in reality the active members of this class and have less time to make up illusions and ideas about themselves .” BASIC TENETS: UNIVERSALITY: “each new class which puts itself in the place of one ruling before it, is compelled, merely in order to carry through its aim, to represent its interest as the common interest of all the members of society, that is, expressed in ideal form: it has to give its ideas the form of universality, and represent them as the only rational, universally valid ones” 6
WRONG: “we detach the ideas of the ruling class from the ruling class itself and attribute to them an independent existence” + “acts of self-determination on the part of the concept” The ideas of the thinkers are “explained perfectly easily from their practical position in life, their job, and the division of labour” 7
Dorfman, Ariel, & Mattelart, Armand. (1971). How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic . New York: I.G. Editions, Inc. (pp. 9–33 + 80–99) David Kunzle, “Introduction to the English Edition” (1991) psychological warfare “conquer the minds,” “restore the king” massive media resistance, hence “practical need” for this book, “not an academic exercise” Entertainment as a major export industry: “Entertainment is America’s second biggest net export (behind aerospace) .... Today culture may be the country's most important product, the real source of economic power and its political influence in the world”. (Time, 24 December 1990) Disney, leading figure in the export and circulation of myths about US imperial culture “ideology is imposed upon non-capitalist, underdeveloped countries” resistance against dependency Peace Corps, Missionary, PR 8
using local labour decentralized production? local “indigenization”? story contradictions among producers? Presidential Medal of Freedom to Disney (1964), League of Nations declares Mickey “International Symbol of Good Will” (1935) Nelson Rockefeller, commissioning Disney propaganda films in WWII for Latin America automagic antibodies use of animal characters targeting children, captive audience authoritarian parenting 9
CONTENT ANALYSIS: everything is in motion, but nothing changes incessant consumption of gadgetry “Science becomes a form of sensationalism and technological gimmickry. It is a branch of the patent office opened in the lunatic asylum” no progress, no memory; gadget used, then vanishes, forgotten “incitement to the consumption of artificial abundance” unholy terror of change “Fame and prize-winning turn an individual into a product - that is, in the etymological sense of the word, a finished object, cut off from any other productive process, ready to be consumed or consummated” rise of the bourgeoisie as a natural, not a social phenomenon—all history, any history, is their history alone “Since the bourgeoisie conceive their epoch to be the conclusion and perfection of humanity, the culmination of culture and civilization, they arrogate to themselves the exclusive right to reinterpret, from their particular viewpoint, the history of their own rise to power. Anything which denies the universality and immortality of the 10
bourgeoisie is considered a trivial and eccentric deviation” Why is Disney a threat?—reference to ideas of centre-periphery, dependency, class domination, exploitation, ideas generated by a mode of production (a) THE MYSTIFIER (b) THE DEMYSTIFIER (c) THE MYSTIFIED 11
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