In this weekend’s Arts section of the Times, Michael Kimmelman, chiming in from Berlin, questions our common associations with the term globalization. In his article D.I.Y. Culture, Kimmelman focuses on the commoditization of cultural expression, rather than political empires and economic employment. He claims “globalism…has always been a dubious concept, a misleading catchall for how the world supposedly works, to which culture, in its increasing complexity, gives the lie.” It is not worldly integration but rather a bric-a-brac edifice.
Out with globalization then? And in with bricolage!
It’s a thought I’ve been chewing on much lately, in fact it kept me from sleeping the other night. I turned to my boyfriend and exclaimed, “I don’t get it! The internet is this fast-forward manifestation of an accelerated collective consciousness, and YET! it is also the greatest tool of fragmentation, lending itself to individuals, small groups and collectives to define themselves as apart from the rest.”
A bewildering thought indeed. Kimmelman, however, has put my grasping into poetic break-down, explaining: “Nationalism, regionalism and tribalism are all on the rise. Societies are splitting even as they share more [goods than before]. Culture is increasingly an instrument to decide and differentiate communities…with more people with technological resources to decide for themselves, culturally speaking, who they are and how they choose to be known [and] seen.”
Culture is code. It is that which we make, consume, wear, speak, behave. It is no longer a singular term of interest. Rather it’s the patch-quilt, a multitude of interests. Globalization today, is the ability to share and claim, disavow and protest, want and reap foreign, national, virtual and natural codes and customs. Globalization, then, is both a commodity of culture and an intangible (and valuable) form of expression. It is both dividing and unifying.
(However, to note, Kimmelman reminds us that signs and symbols in one place holds very different meaning elsewhere. So we must consider that expressions are relative to context. This is a basic thought. yes. agree. However, I’d also interject here, that the veil technology puts on signifiers allows for neutralizing in tones, as we may take pieces from places without knowing original context. )
How lucky we are then. To be living in a time of aggressively manifesting bricolage! Where life is a stew of influence, ingredients of comings-and-goings, of here and there and then and now. However, we must ask ourselves, how much truth is there in these individual articulations of global goods? Perhaps, as Kimmelman concludes, these specific codes and expressions are all punctuations of the larger, deeper human matters, the true stirrings of life.
