Globalization, Media and Agency
Lawrence Grossberg
The easiest way to avoid the real difficulties posed by the complex and
contradictory relations among globalization, culture and language ― the
relation of culture and language is no less complex than that between
globalization and culture ― is to blame it on the limits of disciplinarity and to
call for interdisciplinarity. While I do not want to deny that interdisciplinarity
is absolutely necessary at this conjuncture, such calls have become too easy.
In my experience, most scholars who embrace interdisciplinarity have little
desire to give up their claims to disciplinary privilege and expertise or even
to question the relationship between such claims and the practice of
interdisciplinarity.
The problems facing this gathering (in the first instance, of people and in the
second instance, of papers) are more typical and even banal: they are the
result of trying to understand new situations with old tools, tools which were
often inadequate in the first place. Now I am not saying that globalization or
even the globalization of culture is new, but that its forms, technologies, and
articulations may be. Moreover, the conditions in which the question of
culture and globalization is posed, conditions which make the question
especially urgent, confront us with the increasing power of an affective
(rather than an ideological) conservatism. This conservatism is constructed in
the name of a set of blatantly contradictory values (combining economic
rationalization and market discourses with celebrations of traditional values
and familial relations) and results in an obvious but apparently invisible return
to the production of inhumane conditions and futures for many fractions of the
world's population.
Discussions of globalization tend to focus on either the economic or the
cultural planes but they rarely approach the more difficult and complex issue
of the articulations between them where articulation describes, as
simultaneously fact and act, how discursive and nondiscursive specificities
are preserved within a contingent and provisional link. 1
The globalization of culture raises at least two distinct questions: the first,
arising from a consideration of the proliferation and mobility of texts and
audiences, involves the relationship of cultural practices, language and
effects. As culture moves outside the spaces of any (specific) language,
critics can no linger confidently assume that they understand how cult ural
practices are working. The second question, arising from the apparent
universalization of culture within the spaces of society and everyday life,
involves the relationship of culture, territory and identity. As culture is
deterritorialized and reterritorialized, culture's identification with the local as
the place of identity, culture is itself displaced into a notion of an economy of
difference.
By bringing culture to the foreground of politics, these two questions have
produced different theorizations of globalization and contradictory
conclusions. While some argue that politics has become a matter of
representation (or its absence), and as a consequence, tend to treat all
identities, whether whole or fragmented, as equivalent, others argue that the
traditional binary models of political struggle ―
simple models of
colonizer/colonized, of oppressor/oppressed ― seem inapplicable to a spatial
economy of power which cannot be reduced to simple geographical
dichotomies
―
First/Third, Center/Margin, Metropolitan/Peripheral,
Local/Global.
In most of these discussions, global culture is generally equated with the
so-called mass media of communication (as opposed to language which is
somehow linked with the local ― antiglobal ― culture) but the specificity of
the media is rarely examined. It is simply assumed that the media operate like
the rest of culture, i.e., like language. I want to suggest that the question of
the globalization of culture cannot be considered apart from an interrogation
of the agency of the media. And as a result, globalization is as well the
terrain on which questions about the effectivity of the media as transcultural
agents have to be addressed. As long as the question of the agency of the
media, their actual power within the circuits of the globalization of both
capital and culture, remains unaddressed, some of the most important
questions about globalization, questions about the agency and possibility of
political struggle will also remain unaddressed.
GLOBALIZATION AND AGENCY
Most of the current discussions of globalization, whether economic or
cultural, operate with a very limited range of geometric models or spatial
topographies, all of which assume that globalization can only be understood
as a relationship between two differentiated and opposed terms. Sometimes
those terms are taken to be places, particular locales; sometimes they are
taken to be forces. Different theories of globalization put these possible
relations together in different ways. Fro example, one version of globaliza tion
theory sees it as a relationship between two places, one powerful and the
other powerless (or at least a less powerful), the latter usually located in
so-called peripheral nations (or in "communities" within the "core" nations).
The powerful place is seen as the agent of transnational flows, the weaker
place as the recipient of such flows. This makes globalization little more than
the latest form of colonialism or imperialism in which the resources of the
weaker place are transported to the strong place, while structures and values
of the stronger are transmitted back to the weaker.
A second version of globalization theory frames it as a relation between a
local place and a global force of homogenization, a relation between the
national (place) and the international (force), projected toward a new
transnational context. Usually, the force overwhelms the place but in recent
and more sophisticated theories, the force basically constitutes the place
itself. A third version reverses the directionality, makin g the local into a
force ― localization producing difference and transformation. The local site
then embodies its own force which is constantly inflecting global practices,
resulting in a kind of syncretism or creolization. Here the global is seen as
the simple transportation of the products of the powerful into the region of
the force of the local.
A third model places two different forces in opposition: homogenization (the
global) and creolization (the local). In almost all these geometries, theories of
globalization assumes that the nature of globalization itself has not changed;
the difference is merely a matter of its relative degree, speed, intensity, etc.
The global is assumed to simply continue "the ever rolling march of the old
form of commodification, the old form of globalization, fully in the keeping of
the West, which is simply able to absorb everybody else within its drive." 2 As
a result, the view of the role of culture and the media within all of these
geometries remains fundamentally unchanged as well. The media are seen as
the ideological instruments ― I intend the functionalist language ― of
capitalism, and the globalization of culture is merely the extension of an
economy of cultural imperialism.
But as Hall has pointed out, such models of globalization are not only
inappropriate for the contemporary world, they were also inadequate as a
model of older forms of globalization because
the more we understand about the development of capital itself, the
more we understand that ... alongside that drive to commodify
everything, which is certainly one part of its logic, is another
critical part of its logic which works in and through specificity ... So
that the notion of the ever-marching, ongoing, totally rationalizing,
has been a very deceptive way of persuading ourselves of the
totally integrative and all-absorbent capacities of capital itself ...
As a consequence, we have lost sight of one of the most profound
insights in Marx's Capital which is that capitalism only advances, as
it were, on contradictory terrain. 3
Recently, a number of authors have attempted to describe a theory of
contemporary globalization, which recognizing its different relations, rhythms
and motivations, offers a geometry or spatial topography that does not
assume that globalization must be conceptualized as a relationship between
absolutely different terms, whether places or forces. However, often these
theories cannot avoid the pull of the more taken for granted geometries that
have defined the discourse of globalization for decades. For example, Arjun
Appadurai offers a postmodern theory of globalization by recognizing the
unique historical specificity of globalization: it is "close to the central
problematic of cultural processes in today's world ... the world we now live in
seems rhizomatic." 4 Yet he reinscribes a model of different and competing
forces as he continues: "calling for theories of rootlessness, alienation and
psychological distance between individuals and groups on the one hand, and
fantasies (or nightmares) of electronic propinquity on the other." His
postmodern theory describes a configuration of five "-scapes" or flows:
ethnoscape, technoscape, finanscape, mediascape, ideoscape. These
describe, respectively, the movements of peoples, technologies, finance
capital, entertainment and ideology/news/State politics. These -scapes follows
non-isomorphic paths, and because the sheer speed, scale and volume of
these flows has become so great, the real issue is not so much the "content"
of individual-scapes but the (unpredictable) "disjunctures" between them. The
relative autonomy of the various social vectors has become an absolute
autonomization; and this absolute fragmentation has become the crucial fact
of contemporary globalization. Yet in the end, this model is f olded back into
more comfortable topographies, especially in Appadurai's more concrete
analyses, where it is clear that globalization is a force (or set of forces)
constituting the local. Thus we should not be not surprised when Appadurai
ends up reaffirming the binary spatial economy of a relation between two
forces ― "the central problem of today's global interaction is the tension
between cultural homogenization and cultural heterogenization" 5 ― (or what
he calls indigenization). Notice that his understanding of the global flows is
basically unitary and homogenizing, and thus it is susceptible to the critique
of Stuart Hall given above. Nor should we be surprised when he identifies
these forces with particular places, the stronger and the weaker, in an
apparent (but only apparent) critique of much of the discourse of
globalization. Thus by refusing to assume that the power of homogenization is
always and only located in one place such as the United States, arguing
instead that the site of the force of homogenization must be understood
contextually (e.g., for some countries in Asia, it is Japan and not the U.S. that
has the power), he is also bringing his own theory back into a bipolar
geometry.
Appadurai emphasizes two flows in his discussion of contemporary political
struggles: ethnoscapes and mediascapes. The former points to the
productivity of culture as a systems of identities constructed in differences.
The latter ― and this is perhaps his most interesting contribution ― raises
questions not of ideology but of imagination. I want to put off for the moment
a consideration of the relationship between imagination and culture in order
to continue the discussion of globalization.
Stuart Hall has also proposed a different ―
"postmodern" model of
globalization: while he still sees it has a relationship between two forces ―
globalization and localization, he argues that these two forces are each as it
were realizations of the same basic logic of articulation. Hall describes the
new globalization as a structure which in some way defines a qualitatively
unique space that is both between and encompasses all local places, both the
powerful and the powerless. That is, transnational flows (of labor, capital,
etc.) have produced a formation which is uniquely global and local at the
same time. According to Hall, globalization involves a new emergent structure
of relations between processes of globalization and the construction of
multiple levels of localities which both interrupt and amplify such flows ―
the erosion of the nation-state and national identities is counterbalanced by
the even stronger return of "defensive exclusions," new ecological relations
and a new cultural practice which constructs unity through difference. This
new formation is what Hall calls the "global postmodern culture." This
cultural formation does not speak a single language or ideology, or rather it is
always and already hybridized, itself the product of transcultural exchange. It
is no longer able to construct a single dialect as the proper and normal
version. It must pluralize and deconstruct itself, which is not to deny that it
still originates from a position of power in the West, nor that it attempts to
construct a peculiar form of homogenization and even hegemony through
difference. That is, both the local and the global are articulations of the same
processes of hybridization.
This is a crucial advance for understanding globalization but I fear that it
continues to avoid the crucial question of the relationship between culture
and capital in this economy of (apparent) hybridity. It is not merely a question
of choosing between autonomy or determinism, separation or identification,
but rather, as I shall argue, of looking at the changing relation of capital and
money as already thoroughly "cultural." It is also a matter of calling into
question common sense notions of culture and media, by taking into account
some of the powerful critiques which have been offered in a diverse body of
work: critiques of the totalizing, enclosed and static notion of culture as a
whole way of life; critiques of nostalgic conceptions of community often
carried in notions of culture; critiques of romantic (aesthetic -ethical)
conceptions of art often linked to notions of culture. In fact, if we are to
understand the contemporary articulations of culture and economy, then we
might reasonably begin by questioning the modern and modernist articulations
of culture which link it directly to ethnicity, language, territory and the state. 6
However, before turning my attention to these issues ― and in fact, in order
to address them later in the context of contemporary globalization, I want to
begin by rethinking some of the assumptions which typically ground the
question of globalization and the economy. First, we need to recognize that
capitalism cannot be identified with some specific locale: i.e., capitalism is
not American. Second, we need to formulate a theory capable of dealing with
the fact that cultures are never monolithic; any culture is already hybrid,
always an organization of, a contestation among, a multiplicity of practices.
That is, culture is always a space of articulation (incorporating what Deleuze
and Guattari call minor language and what Bakhtin called the
multi-accentuality of language). Finally, we need to understand the nature of
relations of power as becomings in which each term changes as a result of
the relation. Both the dominant and the subordinate terms move from where
they began, perhaps toward the other, without simply becoming the other. For
example, in colonial relations, we might say that the colonized is becoming
(like) the colonizer, even as the colonizer becomes (more like) the colonized.
As I have said, one of the major assumptions in discussions of globalization is
that the field is structured according to a relationship between fundamentally
different terms: "the local" and "the global." At the same time, these
discussions assume that spatiality itself is often divided into places and
spaces ― the former identifying sites of fullness, identity, "the inside" and
human activity, the latter identifying the emptiness between places in which
nothing happens except the movement from one place to another. Often,
these two pairs are themselves simply identified, the local with place and the
global with space. But a better way of approaching the issue of globalization
might be to begin by disarticulating this equation in order to understand how
these relations are actually articulated. Further, too often, theories of
globalization, like so many other theories today, assume that agency can only
be located in the realms of either places of the local or spaces of forces. If
we are to understand agency in the contemporary world, and in particular, the
agency of the media in globalization, I think we need to develop models of
globalization that do not impose a logic of either coding (or difference as
relation between places) or territorialization (as a relation between forces
and places).
I am proposing that we recognize that globalization involves a complex
topography, and that taking account of this multiplanar existence requires us
to disarticulate: (1)space as the plane of a diagrammatics of power; (2) an
organization of space as a geography of belonging and identification; and
(3)the differentiation of local and global as a description of the changing
nature of the deployment of forces. Starting with their non-identity may make
it easier to inquire into their different productive organizations, their different
economies of becoming. Thus, I want to propose, following Foucault, a
"diagrammatic" logic of globalization in which globalization is seen to be
about the production of a new configuration ― a new becoming ― of reality
itself.
Let me explain the notion of "diagrammatic" power or agency. Arguing against
theories of the social construction of reality in which the social subject is the
only possible agent, the notion of the diagram is predicated on the assumption
that reality is constantly producing itself. Deleuze and Guattari construct such
a diagrammatic theory describing reality itself as expressive, i.e., the world
does not exist outside of its expressions. 7 Expression is neither distinctly
human nor mediating (at least in the modern sense), nor does it assume the
existence of subjects or subjectivity. At the same time, expression cannot be
reduced to some purely biological or material project which erases its agency
for it is in expressing itself that reality produces itself. A similar notion can
be found in the work of the Swiss ethologist Adolph Portmann, who argued
that the diversity of nature can only be understood as an act of "nature
expressing itself" and in that very act, producing itself precisely in and as its
diversity.
Turning Hjelmslev's linguistics (which was directed against structuralism),
Deleuze and Guattari describe expression as the process by which reality
"stratifies" itself. Reality produces itself in the process of distributin g events
onto two planes, although the distribution is neither necessary nor stable.
One plane, that of content, constitutes the matter, or materiality, of the real;
it is that which is acted upon. It "relates not to the production of goods but
rather to a precise state of intermingling of bodies ... including all the
attractions and repulsions, sympathies and antipathies, alternation,
amalgamations, penetrations and expansions that affect bodies of all kinds in
the relations to one another." 8 The other plane, that of expression,
constitutes the functions or transformations of the real. This is not simply a
reinscription of the active and the passive, but rather a production of a
relation between a particular kind of activity and that which the activity acts
upon and makes possible. The two planes describe something like the
nondiscursive (the knowable, the visible) on the one hand and the discursive
(enunciation, the sayable, the articulatable) on the other, although the
equivalence collapses quickly since each strata is both discursive and
nondiscursive. According to Deleuze and Guattari, the categories of content
and expression are operable at every level of existence (from the physical to
the organic to the human). And consequently, discourse and reality a re
always operation on the same plane:
The independence of the form of expression and the form of
content is not the basis for a parallelism between them or a
representation of one by the other, but on the contrary a parceling
of the two, a manner in which expressions are inserted into
contents, in which we ceaselessly jump from one register to
another, in which signs are at work in things themselves just as
things extend into or are deployed through signs. An assemblage of
enunciation does not speak 'of' things; it speaks on the same level
as states of things and states of content. So that the same x, the
same particle, may function either as a body that acts and
undergoes actions or as a sign constituting an act or order word,
depending on which form it is taken up by. 9 (Milles Plateau)
Deleuze and Guattari's argue that contemporary global capitalism "expresses"
a new diagram; their theory sees globalization as a spatial process rather
than one term in a relationship of difference. Unlike many interpreter s of
capitalism, Deleuze and Guattari begin by assuming that finance capital (not
finance capitalism, a particular formation) has always been central to the
constitution of specific formations of capitalism. Thus the contemporary
situation, in which it is generally acknowledged that finance capital holds the
leading position, is not an aberration of the normal functioning of capitalism.
On the contrary, the particular formation of capitalism which Gramsci
referred to as "Fordism," built on the development of domestic markets, mass
production and the simultaneously dominant and determinant role of industrial
capital, was the aberration. While other economists have recognized the
power of finance capital to unify "the previously separate spheres of
industrial, commercial and bank capital," Deleuze and Guattari take it further.
This does not mean that there is nothing distinctive about the contemporary
organization of capitalism. On the contrary, what we are witnessing today is
the realization of the limit-possibility of the power of finance capital in which
banking capital (in the form of money) is not only dominant but also
determinant. The result is not only construction of a formation of finance
capitalism, but one which is not about the production of the for m of value
(capital) but rather its substance (money), for it is as money that capital is
most productive today. (This may at the very least explain the rapid decline
in investment.) What has become evident, especially since the decade of the
1980s, is the presence and power of an increasing pool of private,
unregulated, stateless money, an ecumenical body, a "financial Frankenstein."
According to The Economist (April 1993), "traditional banking went out the
window in the 1980s," 10 with the rise of the derivatives market, a market
defined by various forms of futures contracts, mostly related to foreign
exchange, interest rates, etc. Of course, these developments were neither
totally accidental nor entirely intentional. They were the result of
transformations within the logic of capital which had very specific economic,
political, technological and most importantly cultural conditions of possibility.
This continual circulation of money is producing an infinite debt or at least,
"the means for rendering that debt infinite." 11 This ever-spiraling debt, which
includes both the poorest and the richest nations, does not represent the
failure of industrial capital but capitalism's unrestricted ability to create more
money which is constantly owed to itself. The debt has become the necessary
condition of the continual growth of capitalism. It is at least possible that the
emergence of an international economy of debt financing and of the
ecumenical flows of money begetting money, built on the spatial displacement
of production and the increasing centrality of services (including cultural
production) marks the beginning of a cycle of capital rejuvenation that
promises the emergence of a new formation of capitalism. There is certainly
no reason to assume that this formation will be any more benign than
previous articulations of capitalism and globalization; on the contrary, it
shows every promise of becoming the most devastating and exploitative form
of social power the world has even seen.
If this were the only effect of the new diagram of reality, than Deleuze and
Guattari's theory would be comparable to any one of a number of other
theories (e.g., that of Baudrillard or various marxists) in which everything is
becoming the same (whether capital, exchange value, or simula crum). But I
want to suggest that this first shift, operating as it were on one strata (the
plane of expression), is only possible because the machinery of globalization
is also operating simultaneously on the second strata (the plane of content),
and in fact, that the agency of the diagram is precisely producing these strata
together, not in a relationship of either identity or homology, but in an
articulated relationship nevertheless. [I am almost tempted to argue that
perhaps the most salient feature of this new "diagram" is that the strata are
interchangeable ― i.e., money is as much content as it is expression.]
Turning to this second strata, I want to recall Hall's claim that capitalism has
always worked with and across differences. Deleuze and Guattari argue,
apparently on the other side, that capitalism refuses any coding (difference)
which ties its productivity to an external code; capitalism always moves
ahead by producing decoded flows, but such decodings are never absolute for
they are always limited by the recodings of capitalism's own "axiomatics." Yet
for all their apparent disagreements, these two positions make difference into
something which exists outside of capitalism and across which capitalism
inevitably moves. But, the new diagram has changed the relationship of
capitalism to difference so that capitalism itself is producing difference as the
new form of content. Thus difference is no longer outside of capitalism, nor is
it something capitalism uses and discards as it were. Moreover, it i s not the
particular codes of difference that are important; it is not the substance but
the form of difference that is relevant. It is the form of difference that is
being produced everywhere, on everything and that is articulated to the
production of money.
In other words, a new globalizing diagram is producing differences as part of
and in the service of both a newly emerging reconfiguration of capitalism and
a reorganization of the spatial economy of global power itself. Capitalism is
becoming a technology of distribution rather than production, by producing a
stratification in which differences proliferate in a highly reterritorialized
world (hence, there is a reinvestment in the local and identities as places).
Obviously, if this is the case, it makes the current faith in difference (or
hybridity), as the site of resistance and agency, quite problematic. It is not
merely a matter of claiming that this new globalizing diagram is reproducing
itself across or even as space; rather, it attempts to produce s pace as
differences and differences as space. And even if this project may never be
entirely realizable, if difference has become the very geometrical mechanism
of a new organization of power, then the very possibility and meaning of
social order is no less at stake than the meaning and possibility of social
transformation, resistance and oppositional politics.
While concepts like difference and hybridity suggest that no identity can be
treated in isolation of others, the concept of globalization as a diagr am takes
us into the realm of the differences of difference or more accurately, the
singularity of difference itself. That is, the very notion of identity, even when
it is treated as articulated and hybrid, has to be retheorized and multiplied.
Recognizing the diversity of ways in which local-global identities can be
constructed and lived means identifying the different forms of the
construction of identity, different forms of localism and translocalism: e.g.,
border peoples; diasporic peoples; transnational peoples; cosmopolitan
peoples; indigenous peoples; incorporated peoples; hybrid peoples; and
"differentiated" (or othered) peoples. Rather than assuming that identities
belong to particular places, we need to explore the complex relationships
through which different kinds of identities are constructed in different spaces.
Only as we begin to think through this diagram of capitalism and globalization
can we then finally examine the articulation of the local and the global into
relations of belonging (territorialization) and identity (coding), to inquire into
the placing and spacing of the local and the global, and the localizing and
globalizing of the places of the local and the global, and the localizing and
globalizing of the places and spaces of people's belonging. After all, in the
contemporary diagram, one can belong to the global as a place just as one
can belong to the local as a space. The bottom line is that the new diagram
foregrounds questions which have been repressed through the long rule of
modernist rationality: what does it mean? to be situated in particular places?
what does it mean to belong? and what different ways (or modalities) of
belonging are possible in the contemporary milieu? It is no longer a question
of globality (as homelessness) and place (as the identification of the local
territory and identity), but of the various ways people are attached and
attached themselves (affectively) into the world. It is a question of the global
becoming local and the local becoming global.
MEDIA AND AGENCY
The fact of globalization in the contemporary world is closely linked with the
global dispersion of western culture into almost every possible place, and the
growing saturation of space itself by the lines of force of the new media
technologies. If understanding globalization requires an investigation of the
media and culture, then it is also the case that any attempt to explore the
agency of the media and culture in the contemporary world requires that they
be placed within the context of contemporary globalization.
The mass media, historically, are not equivalent to the forms of popular
culture and information (news) which they have increasingly served to
distribute in the modern world, although the two are often conflated. Yet
perhaps the distance between the media and culture is asymptotically
diminishing so that, just as it is no longer possible to distinguish news from
entertainment, it is also longer possible to separate the forms of agency of
popular culture and those of the media. Moreover, there is a sense in culture
culture has become the scene of its own efforts. Bauman's statement that
"[t]he conditions [have] been created for culture to become conscious of
itself and an object of its own practice" 12 applies more to the contemporary
scene than it does to the moment of modernity as he assumes.
These developments are inseparable from the increasing domination of
cultural issues in contemporary political struggles, and from the increasing
tendency for questions about objective economics and political conditions to
become cultural issues, either as matters of experience ― e.g., do you feel
better off ― or questions of representation. For example, recently, there
have emerged some political discourses (e.g., that of the extreme Right) and
foreign policy discourses which define conflicts less by biolo gical race (in the
case of the Right) or by state and ideological interests than by differences of
"culture" (differences which are nevertheless linked to historical civilizations,
religions and ethnicities). At the same time, the discourse of culture is
becoming an explicit site for arguments about the malleability of people's
lives. John Frow and Meaghan Morris, for example, point to the emergence of
a discourse which makes culture the preferred explanation for the failure of
particular national economies. In this discourse, "changing the culture"
becomes a shorthand way of challenging the conduct of people's everyday
lives. 13
The globalization of culture is also somehow connected with changes in the
ways ideology is lived and effective in the contemporary world. Some critics
have even gone so far as to suggest that the nature of ideology itself is
changing. As Slavoj Zizek describes it, there is an increasingly cynical
inflection to the logic of ideology. If, according to Marx, ideology could be
described as: "they don't know what they are doing but they are doing it
anyway," Zizek proposes that the contemporary relation to ideology can be
described as: "they know what they are doing but they are doing it anyway." 14
Although numerous commentators have tried to describe this as cynicism, I
think that is inadequate; at the very least, it is a cynicism saturated with
irony. And it is closely related to what Stuart Hall has described as a
hegemonic politics, a politics built on consent to leadership rather than
consensus around policy. It is an administrative rather than an ideological
hegemony, an electoral politics built on people's willingness to support
parties and candidates even though they do not share their beliefs and
commitments.
At the same time, even as culture has moved so obviously to the center
stage, there is a sense in which culture is also becoming less central, less
powerful and less important. I am inclined to agree with Bill Readings' that
the emerging global system of capitalism no longer see ms to require "a
culture content in terms of which to interpellate and manage subjects" even in
the face of the extraordinary quantitative and spatial expansion of popular
culture. 15 In other words, culture no longer matters to the powers that be, any
more than cultural capital matters. Instead, capitalism is only committed to
"monetary subjects without money" who are merely "the shadow of money's
substance." 16 Readings argues that if the sphere of the ideological has
become visible (not only in critical theory and the academy but literally
everywhere), it is because it is not where the real game is being played
anymore. Power in the contemporary world seems to be building structures of
subordination based directly on economic and political strategies, and
representational strategies are only locally and occasionally deployed in
these struggles. That is, power in the contemporary diagram seems in some
ways to be returning to Foucault's juridico-discursive system (and away from
governmentality and discipline) except that now, it is not built on simple and
direct violence (against the body of the criminal, although it may be working
toward that) and it is certainly not spectacular. Rather, it is all a matter of the
media as th agencies of popular culture.
Let me then return to the question of agency. I have argued elsewhere that
human agency is not a matter of the individual's (or groups) power to act;
rather it is about people's access to particular places ― places at which
particular kinds of actions, producing particular kinds of affects are possible
― places at which one can intercede and influence the various "forces" and
vectors that are shaping the world. 17 In most discussions the agency of the
media is limited in two signigicant ways that depend upon two d ifferent
configurations of the concept of mediation itself. In the first deployment, the
media stand between two subjects (whether individual, institutional or
collective), each of which stands outside of the media and exists as at least
possible agents affecting both the media and the world through the media.
The media simply carry the intentions of one subject/agent whose agency is
proven by its very ability to produce and transmit media messages to an
audience (which, depending upon one's theory, either actively appropriates
and articulates the message, or is somehow passively affected and/or
interpellated by the message). In this sense, mediation actually denies the
media any real agency of their own. Instead, agency is always located
elsewhere, whether in the first or the last instance of the circuit of
communication.
In the second deployment, it is the media themselves which mediate, not
between two subjects, but between subjects and objects, between
consciousness and reality. Here the media are ideological agents in the first
instance (although some theorists continue to treat the media themselves as
ideologically neutral institutions and technologies). It is at least true that,
following Marx's notion of ideology, often the media do not know what they
are doing, but they are doing it anyway. Ideology involves not only a struggle
over meaning (signification as difference) but the further struggle over the
claim to representation (information). These ideological practices are
assumed to involve psychological processes (often including the productions
of pleasures, desires, etc.) that are always and everywhere the same.
Moreover they are assumed to produce formations of subjectivity and identity
(through privileging processes modeled upon the visual gaze an d the
linguistic pronoun). Yet, in the last instance, the media are not themselves the
agents of their own ideological work, for this work is always about power
relations and realities defined and located elsewhere (if not always outside
the media).
I want to take a detour here, to talk about (and reject) the reduction of
culture to mediation or rather, the reduction of mediation to meaning and
hence, the reduction of the technologies of culture and media to interpretive
structures. Since the beginning of modernity, culture has come to be
understood as the mediating power of meaning (often through the universality
of communicative practices): all expression and experience is defined as
mediated and the category of meaning is absolutized. Culture as the
necessary process of mediation is implicated in a logic of lack. It is the
medium of information, the supplement, which substitutes in human life for
the fact of inadequate genetic coding, instinctual wiring, sensory relation to
the real, or what have you. Culture functions within what Rosaldo has called
"the stark Manichean choice between order and chaos." 18 Culture is the
medium/agency by which the chaos of reality is transformed into an ordered
― read "manageable" ― sense of human reality. Culture is the paradoxical
realm through which, as Carey puts it, we first represent the world and then
take up residence in our representations. Carey recognizes that this suggests
that culture is a form of psychosis, of schizophrenia. 19 Without culture, reality
would be unavailable except as James' "booming, buzzing confusion." Within
culture, reality is always and already sensible. Culture is thus close to if not
identified with the space of human consciousness, the middle space of
experience, the uniquely human realm of existence. It is the space within
which almost all "modernist" philosophy operates.
There is a specific and peculiar logic to the modernist concept of culture as
mediation, for it defines a dialectical space in which the anthropological and
aesthetic, the normative and the descriptive, the fragment and the totality,
are themselves mediated by the very notion of culture as mediation
(understood in terms of the communication/production of meaning). Culture as
a dialectic reproduces the dialectical role of culture; mediation itself is
always the mediating term. This enables "culture" to reconcile of the key
contradictions of modernity (individual/social, reason/history, reason/nature,
etc.) by becoming the very logic of reconciliation. By producing the form of
the specificity of human existence (signification/subjectification), and the
particularity of its actualization at any place-time, culture can serve as a
regulatory ideal (whether as language, art, imagination, etc.) that unites
communication and community. Further, as Bill Readings has argued, culture,
by bringing together development and meaning, mediates between the ethnos
(people), the nation and the State, a mediation that is absolutely necessary to
the founding of modern Europe and of its power.
Without denying that culture practices enable us to "make sense" of the world
(or at least to navigate within a sensible world), I would contest the reduction
of sense-making to cognitive meaning and interpretation, and the model of
culture as somehow standing apart from ― and between ― other planes
which it interprets. Indeed I believe that the only way to begin to understand
the effectivity of culture in the context of the contemporary diagram (or any
context for that matter) is to recognize the culture practices always operate
on multiple planes, producing multiple effects that cannot be entirely analyzed
in the terms of any theory of communication, ideology, consciousness or
semiotic. Discourse may produce something other than meaning (capital,
desire, materialities, etc.); sometimes it may produce meaning effects merely
on the way to producing other effects; sometimes these other effects are only
possible through the mediation of meaning; sometimes the production of
meaning may be little more than a distraction, a by-product. The difference is
not a matter of intentionality or teleology but of the fact that not all effects
are "quantitatively" equal.
But if culture is not simply a matter of meaning and communication, then the
struggle over "culture" is not merely a struggle over interpretive or cognitive
maps available to the different and differently subordinated fractions (which
in the contemporary world includes the vast majority of the population).
Instead, the analysis of culture would involve the broader exploration of the
way in which discursive practices construct and participate in the machinery
by which the ways people live their lives (behaviors and relations, including
modalities of affiliation and belonging, agency and mobility) are themselves
produced and controlled. Rather than looking for the "said" or trying to derive
the saying from the said, rather than asking what texts mean or what p eople
do with texts, cultural studies would be concerned with what discursive
practices do in the world.
Deleuze and Guattari's theory of discourse grounds such an approach; they
refuse to separate the productivity of discourse (as a human practice) from
that of reality itself or from their more general theory of expression. What is
distinctive about expression at the level of the human is that ― perhaps we
can even call it ― culture is (1)organized into assemblages of enunciation (or
semiotics) (2)which produce "incorporeal transformations." That is,
statements operate within discursive formations to produce real effects on
bodies in the world, even though such effects do not depend upon material
forms of causality and mediation. The particular nature of ef fects that a
formation is capable of producing depends upon the "regimes of signs" or
discursive logics (functions) which are implicated in its existence ― any
semiotic mixes any number of such functions, producing multiple and
multidimensional effects. Such logics can be characterized as operating: (1)on
a particular plane (e.g., interpretive Vs passional); (2)along a particular
vector or (architectonic principle ― e.g., circularity Vs linearity); and
(3)according to a specific economy (faciality Vs the black hole). According to
Deleuze and Guattari, there are many such regimes, although clearly the two
most important are those which, taken together, not coincidentally constitute
the modernist space of culture. The "principle strata binding human beings
are the organism, signifiance and interpretation, and subjectification and
subjection." 20 Yet importantly, they emphasize that the signifying regime (or
signifiance) ― the one which has occupied the attention of most cultural and
media critics ― "is only one regime of signs among others, and not the most
important one." 21
In most discussions of the role of the media (and media culture) in the current
context of globalization, the media are treated as simply the dominant ―
most visible, most powerful ― form of culture in the contemporary world,
especially in the transnational context. But as I have said, in the end, this
effectively always displaces the agency of the agency of the media onto
something or someone else. Alternatively, starting with Deleuze and Gua ttari,
there is no reason to assume that popular culture/media apparati involve
interpretation and signification, or subjectivity and identity, or that they exist
in a between which is someplace other than that of the real. Instead we need
a different theory of the media as agency, one which understands their
popularity in terms of a number of distinctive features. First they are
grounded in multiple and heterogeneous sensuous economies (including
vision, sound and tactility). And as a result, the media are extraordinarily
diverse; we should not immediately assume that the most visible ―
television, film and the net ― are necessarily the most powerful. We need to
include the various media of music distribution (e.g., CDs, cassettes ―
including independent distribution networks, and radio ―
including
community and pirate stations), comics, videos, PCs ―
hardware and
software, newspapers of various sorts, computer games, etc. In fact, "the
media" is a complex multiplicity and it may be impossible or at least fr uitless
to make many generalizations across this multiplicity. Moreover, instead of
treating the media as if they were simply and unproblematically another form
of culture, we should recognize the complexity which these different
technologies and economies bring into the heart of culture.
Second, the media are so deeply integrated into the fabric and texture of
everyday life as to be virtually inseparable. The various discursive and
nondiscursive practices of the media are like pieces of a rhizome, an
overgrown hedge, or a clump of crabgrass; they cannot be extricated and
studied in and of themselves (which is not to say that they are not effective
or that their effectivity cannot be approached). Third, their power in the
contemporary world is largely (usually in the first and almost always in the
last instance) affective rather than ideological. I do not mean to deny that
they sometimes produce meanings and representations (and even work
ideologically); I am claiming that such effects are there to take us so mewhere
else, although they may not always succeed. Consequently (and fourth), the
media as popular culture function as machinery for living and surviving; they
offer procedures and produce states which are about finding ways to navigate
one's way through everyday life. Media culture is about the organization of
"the various time/spaces in which the labor, as well as the pleasure of
everyday living is carried out." 22 Media culture is about exploring the
consequences and possibilities of new forms of mobility; it is all about
modalities of affiliation and belonging, models of community not based on
time or identity, and strategies of place-making and agency. Thus the media
are always ahead of the subject as it were.
Nevertheless I do think one can make some general statements about the
functioning of U.S. media culture in the transnational context, for not
surprisingly, I do not think it is operating in a straightforward ideological
way. We can begin to re-place the media into the specific context of the
contemporary diagram of globalization. But we have to proceed cautiously,
for globalization is not a new phenomenon. Yet its current technologies and
projects, as well as its diagram, may be. My starting point is simpl e enough:
relations within any social and spatial formation are always characterized by
different degrees and patterns of mobility and stability. 23 (At the same time,
such formations, including those of globalization, have a real internal
diversity ― and hybridity ― which is occluded by notions like culture and
nation. My argument is that while the field of forces of globalization itself
produces the local (as territories or organizations of environments ―
whether as the village, the nation, or the region), it does not produce the
places of everyday life. In fact, this is precisely what the media are about in
the contemporary world. If on one level the media are producing relations of
(and the very categories of) identity and difference, they are also produc ing
the possibility of alternative (ways of theorizing and describing) relations of
interiority and exteriority, of belonging and affiliation, of identification and
investment ― i.e., of the articulation of places and identities.
I propose to describe one of the dominant forms of the media's agency as the
construction of a structured mobility or a lived geography. To put it more
directly, the media operate as map-makers. If globalization is producing a
heterogeneity of locales (differences), the media const ruct this dispersed set
of places as temporary moments of stability, sites at which people may stop
and "install" their "selves" into practices, and they construct as well an
organization of the space between places (and hence of the relations among
them) as lines of mobility, enabling people to move between and through the
sites of stability. Of course, the fact is that within any such structured
mobility, not all places are equal or equally accessible; and the question of
the relations of space and place are always implicated in relations of power
and control. Taking these together, we can say that the media constitute a
spatio-temporal topography of practices, of enabled and enabling activities,
which define the mobilities and stabilities of everyday life . A "structured
mobility" describes the ways people travel across the surfaces of culture and
the ways they anchor themselves into their imaginary depths. It is an
historical organization, both spatial and temporal, which enables and
constrains the ways space and place, mobility and stability, are practiced or
lived. It is a map of investments and belongings, of identities without
differences. Again, it is worth reiterating that such investments and their
organization (and whether and where they are allowed and disallowed) are
always contested, always inseparable from relations of power and control.
While agency of the media (producing a structured mobility) cannot guarantee
how any (culture) practice will be enacted at any particular place ― it does
not totally determine what people can or might do at a particular site
because, in part, that depends upon the nature of the investment ― or how
people move on, it does construct the highways which structure and constrain
people's possibilities at any moment, the intersections which define the
ambiguous possibilities of changing directions and speeds, and the addresses
at which people can choose to temporary take lodging for various activities. A
structured mobility is a constant transformation of places into spac es, and
spaces into places, the constant shuttling between the dispersed system of
stabilities within which people live out their everyday lives. It defines the
sites which people can occupy, the investments people can make in them, and
the planes along which people can connect and transform them so as to
construct a consistent, livable space for themselves.
But this media topography is itself articulated by other forces and struggles,
particularly as it itself becomes deployed by and caught up within the d iagram
and processes of globalization and global capital. At the level of the
globalization of the media (and culture), we can no longer assume that the
new media economy can be described simply in terms of the distribution and
dispersion of U.S. culture through U.S. media. The U.S. is not the only
producer or exporter of media products in the contemporary world (even in
media such as film and television, we would have to talk about India, Hong
Kong, Brazil and Mexico). Nevertheless, whatever the geographic al origin and
language of the new media products, there is something vaguely "American"
about the discursive space within which all of these products operate.
One significant result of the global articulation of the media is that, especially
(but not only) for those living outside the discursive and everyday world of
the United States, the places marked and produced by and within this
structured mobility are themselves articulated to and as identities. This
constructed equivalence of place and identity constitutes in my opinion
constitutes the primary effectivity of the media's structured mobility as a
global force. As a result, identity itself has become the biggest U.S. export 24
in at least two senses: first, the very category of identity (closely implicat ed
with images and logics of difference) becomes a dominant thematic in global
culture and politics, in keeping with the diagram of global capitalism. These
differences can appear either as the new flexible postmodern subject (who is
always different to itself) or the new ethnicities, which however dialectically
constituted, always appear to be essentialist because they are articulated to
forces such as diaspora, market and oppression. Moreover, they are based on
a new "immediate relation to language or religion or style etc."
Second, the identification of specific places and identities is constructed
through images of the auratic nature of commodities in which communities
become lifestyles embodying imaginations of becoming American; and these
imaginations are always articulated to places (like Melrose Place). In order to
clarify this point, I want to return to Appadurai's claim that the mediascape
operates with and on the social imagination. He claims not only that
imagination has become a social practice but also, that it plays a qualitatively
new role in social life. Thus, the various-scapes have become "the building
blocks of imagined worlds ― the multiple worlds which are constituted by
the historically situated imaginations of persons and groups spread around
the world." How do we make sense of this? Imaginations is not ideology
because although it may define one's hopes and dreams, its power depends
upon the fact that it is not claiming to be representation of reality. On the
other hand, it is distinct from fantasy, not only in its detail, but more
importantly because it is conceived to be actually possible. Furthermore,
imagination is not involved in an economy of repression(in which fantasy
becomes a transformed expression of a desire, one which one mi ght not
necessarily want to become real). I do not think that Appadurai is denying
that people in other times and places have imagined better lives for
themselves; instead, I believe that he is arguing that such dreams were never
embodied in such socially shared and detailed images of alternative
possibilities ― alternative identities and places ― before. It is one thing to
dream about "the promised land;" it is another to dream about Melrose Place,
or more simply, to invest one's self, as it were, in a series of specific
commodities, differences and places. Thus, the media exist in relation to "the
free-floating yearning for American style, even in the most intense contexts
of oppositions to the United States." 25
What does it mean to yearn for American style, or even to want to be
American? It is not about politics or culture or even ideology. Still it would be
a mistake to say that ideology has no place in the media; on the contrary,
U.S. media culture is often about ideology (or more accurately, about
ideologies). In this sense, what the media exports are images of ideologies,
often in conflict. Such ideologies are embodied and embedded within images
of specific commodities, communities and places, and in the competing logics
that make such images visible in specific ways. Thus it is less a matter of the
kinds of commodities on display, but of the fact that it is always and only
commodities that can be "on display" (for it is the commodity which has
become the site of an aura in the age of technological production). It is the
aura of commodities ― and their (imaginary) power over people's identities
― which is at stake in the battle between ideologies. Similarly, communities
are less a matter of relations than of images of lifestyles (themselves defined
by the aura of commodities) embodying imaginations of "becoming American,"
i.e., of entering into the auratic space of the commodity. Because clearly, the
"American" here is neither a matter of ideology and interpellation, nor of
identity and hybridity. Finally, places are less real sites of living than images
which are inseparable from issues of commodities and communities. In this
way, the media are centrally implicated in the diagram of global capitalism,
for these specific functionings of commodities and communities are crucial to
the production of money (as opposed to capital) and differences (as opposed
to isolated identities). As forms of identification and belonging, they are
involved in a psychic cultural geography, which is not quite reducible to a
cultural imaginary.
In the end, what appears to be at stake in the globalization of the media's
structured mobility ― what in one sense we can say the U.S. is exporting and
what is driving the new diagram of the global reality ―
is a new
industrial-financial system (and in this sense, the U.S. stands in for the
complex totality of a specific socio-economic articulation of the possibilities
of capitalism). But this is not to make the media, once again, servants to the
agency of another. I am not suggesting that the media are simply doing the
work of particular economic interests, nor am I suggesting that their role is
somehow secondary, following upon the heals of the diagram of global
capitalism. The reorganization of reality and power which is described by the
appearance of a new diagram would not be possible without the media, for the
constitution of the diagram of global capitalism which the media appear to
serve itself depends upon the media's deployments of specific structured
mobilities. And in particular, the changing relations of value (between capital
and money, between difference and identity, etc.) which are at the heart of
the new diagram are themselves the product of the diagram of the media (if I
may be allowed to speak in such terms). For what is at stake in globalization
(ant the relationship between economics and culture in the new global
diagram) is not the realization of a new economic (industrial) system, but the
reinvention of the individual and of the place of individuality in the new
diagram. And I do not believe that this can be separated from the agency of
the media in a global reality.
NOTE
1 Jennifer Fisher
2 Stuart Hall, "The local and the global," in Anthony D. King (ed.) Culture Globalization
and the World System. London : Macmilian (1991), p.29.
3 Ibid.
4 Arjun Appadurai, "Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy," Public
Culture 2 (1990), 2-3.
5 Ibid., p.5.
6 See Lawrence Grossberg, "The victory of culture, a fragment on mediation".
7 See Gilles Deleuze, Foucault (Trans. Sean Hand), Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1988.
8 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1987, p.90.
9 Ibid.
10 Ted Wheelwright, "Futures, markets, ..." Arena Magazine February-March, 1994.
11 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1977, 197.
12 Zygmunt Bauman,
13 John Frow and Meaghan Morris, "introduction," John Frow and Meaghan Morris (ed.),
Australian Cultural Studies. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993.
14 Slavoj Zizek,
15 Bill Readings, The University in Ruins,
16 Helen Grace, personal conversation.
17 Lawrence Grossberg, We Gotta Get Out Of This Place, New York: Routledge, 1992.
18 Renato Rosaldo, Culture and Truth
19 James W. Carey, Communication as Culture
20 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus,
21 We might hypothesize that the media are typically a mixed formation with elements of
various regimes including (to use Deleuze and Guattari's terms): the post-signifying (they
are after all passional and even obsessional; they do produce positive lines of flight but
not the doubled subject), presignifying (it is after all heterogeneous) and
countersignifying (it is after all distributive). But they may also include elements of other
regimes which have yet to be described.
22 Meaghan Morris, "On the Beach," in Lawrence Grossberg et al. (ed.), Cultural
Studies, New York: Routledge, 1992, 467.
23 We need to emphasize this. It was recently pointed out to me by Shunya Yoshimi that
a Japanese intellectual wrote in 1929 that "America has become the world." Moreover,
we need to examine the complex forms and histories of international and global relations
― the two are not equivalent of course. We need to distinguish between colonialism
(predicated on force) and imperialism (characterized by a real social and cultural
presence which might include force), from forms of power in which the dominant power
serves as either a symbol or as a system. It is obviously the latter which I think is
operating in the present context.
24 I am grateful to Meaghan Morris for this insight.
25 Appadurai.
<±¹¹®¿ä¾à>
전지구화, 미디어 그리고 문화의 ‘ 역동성’
로렌스 그로스버그
이 원고에서 미국의 문화연구론자이자 커뮤니케이션 전공자인 로렌스 그로스버그는
전지구적 차원에 걸쳐 진행되고 있는 ‘ 세계화 globalization’ 의 과정과 세계화의 주된
동인으로서 현단계 자본주의가 갖고 있는 특수성에 관해 심도있는 분석을 하고 있다.
그는 과거와 비교해서 ‘ 다국적’ 이며 ― 그러니까 하나의 언어만을 사용하지 않는 ―
훨씬 더 다양한 속도와 리듬을 갖고서 기존의 영역들을 탈피하거나 허물고
deterritorialize, 그와 동시에 새로운 영역 그리고 질서를 끊임없이 만들어내는
reterritorialize 현단계 자본주의의 큰 틀 안에서 미디어와 문화의 역할 및 그 복잡하게
얽힌 회로들을 위치시킨다. 그로스버그는 국가나 지역적 경계를 초월하는 다양한
미디어와 문화산물들로 이루어진 탈지역적 translocal, 탈국가적 흐름들 transnational
flows이 흔히 문화와 관련된 산물들을 위치시키는 ‘ 의 미 화 의 층위 the plane of
signitication’ 를 벗어나서, 일상 안에서 다른 세력들(예컨대 정치 경제 사회적인 층위에
존재하는 힘들)과 결합해서 만들어내는 새로운 현상들과 ‘ 리 얼 리 티 ’ 를 추적한다.
이러한 추적을 통해 그는 특히 ‘ 문 화 의 세계화’ 라는 주제 안에서 미디어, 문화,
영역/영토 territory, 정체성 identity간의 상호관계가 역동적으로 변화하고 있는 양상을
그의 ‘ 공간적 유물론 spatial materialism’ 을 통해 설명하고 있다.
그로스버그는 현재 진행되고 있는 세계화의 과정과 그것에 연계된 문화, 그리고
미디어라는 ‘ 공간 ’ 의 변화를 설명하기 위해서, 먼저 이러한 ‘ 새로운 상황을 오래된
연장으로’ 이해하려 하는 기존의 경제적 혹은 문화적 세계화론들이 갖고 있는 한계를
지적한다. 그는 기존의 많은 세계화론들이 정적인, 그리고 제한된 지리적 이분법 ―
예컨대 중심:주변, 제1세계:제3세계, 지역성 the local:세계성 the global ― 모델을
설정해서 그 안에서 문화, 영토, 정체성, 지역/국가들을 하나의 유기적이고 내적으로
통합된 self-contained 하나의 단위로 묶거나 서로간의 ‘ 상 동 성 homology ’ 을
강조하는 한편, 이 단계들을 다른 문화, 영토, 정체성, 지역/국가들과 대응시켜 양자간의
‘ 절대적 차이성’ 내지는 이질성을 강조하고 있는 것을 비판한다.
이러한 지리학적인 모델들에서 세계화의 과정은 두 ‘ 장소’ 간의 일종의 ‘ 힘겨루기’ 나,
하나의 강력한 장소나 지역 혹은 국가가 그렇지 않은 장소나 지역, 국가에 일반적으로
다양한 문화, 경제, 테크놀로지와 관련된 산물들을 거의 일방적으로 유통시키거나, ‘
주변부’ 라고 일반적으로 상정되는 하나의 지역
locale or locality, 공동체, 국가가
제한되기는 했지만 쇄도해 들어오는 ‘ 중 심 ’
혹은 세계화의 세력들 the global에
대항하면서 일종의 혼합된 결과를 만들어 나가는 과정 hybridization으로 설명된다.
이러한 ‘ 제한된’ 지리적 모델이나 ‘ 공간모형 spatial topography’ 안에서 종종 ‘ 장소
places ’ 는 주변부에 있는 저항적이고, 내부 the inside에 자리잡고 있고 충만한 the
fullness 문화적 혹은 공동체적 정체성을 이루는 요인들과 연계되는 반면, ‘ 공간 spaces
’ 은 흔히 장소와 장소 사이를 움직이는 자본이나 문화의 힘이 지나가는 비어있는 상태
the emptiness이거나 어느 특정 장소를 이루는 힘과는 무관한 homeless 곳으로
정의되기도 한다.
결국 이 기존의 이론들은 약간의 차이는 있다 해도 본질적으로는 흡사한 ‘ 문 화 적
제국주의’ 의 연장선상에서 거론되고 있으며, 세계화의 세력들은 ‘ 서구에서 발원해서 그
행로에 있는 모든 대상들을 흡수하는 오래된 형태의 상품화 그리고 세계화 과정의
중단없는 전진’ 을 계속해서 수행하고 있는 것으로 간주된다.
그로스버그는 이러한 공간적 모델의 한계를 뛰어넘을 수 있는 대안적인 ‘ 문화지형학’
혹은 ‘ 공 간 적 유물론’ 을 제시하고 있는데 그 특징들은 다음과 같다.: 먼저 이미
현단계의 자본주의가 특정 지역에 기반을 두고 있지 않으며 capitalism is not American,
문화와 경제의 영역이 삼투되어 있는 상황에서, 자본주의는 사회적 ․ 문화적 차이들을
differences 이용한다. 따라서 ‘ 중심’ 과 ‘ 주변’ 혹은 ‘ 장소’ 와 ‘ 공간’ 사이의
절대적 차별성을 매개로 해서 ‘ 주 변 ’ 의 입장에서 수립되는 문화정치적 투쟁들 역시
그러한 자본주의적 세계화 전략에 포섭될 수 있다. 따라서 세계화시대의 정체성 그리고
소속감 belonging을 기초로 한 문화전략은 미리 주어진 ‘ 장 소 ’ 나 ‘ 공 간’ 혹은 ‘
중심’ 과 ‘ 주 변 ’ 에 관한 정의를 토대로 시작할 것이 아니라, 실제로 이 개념들이
주어진 국면에서 어떠한 담론 및 ‘ 비담론’ 적 힘들(이를테면 제도적 장치, 경제적 동인,
사회내 포진되어 있는 세력들 그리고 ‘ 권 력 ’ )에 의해 ‘ 접 합 articulation ’ 되 고
만들어지게 하는 경로들을 추적하는데서 시작되어야 한다.
유랑인들, 원주민들, 집시들, 코스모폴리탄들, 소수인종들의 예에서 보듯이 특정 ‘ 장소’
에 특정한 아이덴티티들이 속하고 이 아이덴티티들을 바탕으로 해서 쇄도해오는 세계화의
힘들을 방어하는 기제로 무비판적으로 이론화시키기보다는 각기 다른 종류의
아이덴티티들이 각기 다른 ‘ 공 간 ’ 에 서 만나고 해체되고 만들어질 수 있다는 점에
주목하고, 흔히 이분법적 그리고 대칭적인 개념으로 사용되는 ‘ 장 소 ’ 와 ‘ 공 간 ’ 의
개념을 해체시키고 그 사이에 존재하는 복잡성을 드러내 줄 필요가 있다. 다시 말해
자본주의와 세계화의 과정이 새로은 ‘ 컨 텍 스 트 ’ 들 을 계속해서 만들어내는 상황에서
그로스버그는 ‘ 지역적인’ 영역과 ‘ 세계화’ 의 영역들 간의 경계가 점차 흐려져가는
한편, 경제적 ․ 문화적 세계화 과정 속에 개입하는 세력들 ―
예를 들어 미국식
대중문화나 다국적 문화산업 ― 에 의해 특히 일상생활 속에서 지속적인 삶, 정체성,
차이들이 영향받고 수용되는 양식에 관심을 기울인다.
그는 이러한 수용이나 ‘ 개입’ 이 미디어를 통해 행해지는 방식과 미디어의 ‘ 역동적인’
능력에 주목한다. 여기서 미디어는 단순한 정보의 매개나 이데올로기적인 결과를
만들어내는 기제로서가 아니라, 사람들이 일상의 흐름 혹은 ‘ 지리학 lived geography’
속에서 실재하거나 상상속에 있는 특정 장소나 공간들을 끊임없이 넘나들면서 형성하게
되는 소속감, 동일시 identification, 정서 affect, 애착감 그리고 ‘ 차 이 와 정체성 간의
변화하는 가치관계’ 들을 배분하고 견인하는 능동적인 장치 machinery로 작용한다.
그로스버그는 미디어가 이러한 ‘ 구 조 적 유동성 structured mobility ’ 을 통해서
사람들이 잠시 점유하는 occupy 자기 정체성과 장소들 places/spaces/sites 간의 접합을
정의해 준다고 보고, 이러한 ‘ 길 잡 이 map-making로서의 미디어의 역동성이 세계화
과정 속에 새롭게 모습을 드러내는 현상과 ’ 리 얼 리 티 ‘ 들 을 이해하는 한 관건이라고
주장하고 있다.
국문초록 : 이기형
abstracted by Keehyeung Lee