I.  

At the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, the London City Government used  a sightseeing bus filled with people of different nationalities and ethnicities to present  a multicultural spectacle to the world, a gesture that attempted to depict peaceful  co-existence among diverse nationalities and cultures. Yet the notion of a harmonious  post-colonial world is to be found not only in the post-imperialist West, but also in  supposedly de-colonized non-Western societies. The greatest benefit of this notion is  that it prompts a continuous questioning of centuries of exclusionist policies and  conventions in the West and the desire for a heterogeneous, tolerant, pluralistic, and  open society. In the post-colonial West, policies of multiculturalism have been aimed  at guaranteeing an open, vital, civil society and a new West that would emphasize  tolerance and diversity. But is it really time to celebrate the victory of this utopian  ideal and of post-colonialism?  

Post-colonialism has earned a place in the enclosed and dominant worldview history  of nation-states. It has been integrated with various social movements in the past forty  years and cleared new critical and narrative ground. Its merits are obvious in literature,  the arts, and politics. However, these merits have quickly degenerated to one of  routine within the last twenty years. We often see and hear symbolic forms of cultural  critique in various international exhibitions and symposiums labeled with key terms  such as: “identity,” “the Other,” “translation,” “immigrant,” “migration,”  “indigenous,” “difference,” “diversity,” “hegemony,” “marginalization,” “minority,”  “oppression,” “visible/invisible,” “class,” “sex,” and so forth. Today, given the  existing post-colonial toolkit, these concepts and ideas that once possessed  revolutionary critical force have assumed another dominant form of discourse, this  time, in the name of “political correctness.” The formerly deconstructive and  anti-hegemonic critical strategy is setting up its regime, a “regime of the Others,”  within academia. For over a decade, post-colonialism has become an aggregate of  theoretical criticism and strategy, a catchall field of a “politics of discourse.” What  this politics of discourse has created is a society formally free to realize a society that  praises difference, but that cannot create difference itself.  

Multiculturalism and political correctness, in essence, allows everyone the right to  safeguard him- or herself, and that everyone should tolerate all others. However, once  politicized and transformed into an ideology, diversity and tolerance can quickly  degrade to cultural relativism, or even cynicism, thus constituting the emasculation of  the cultural ideal. Politics and capital will quickly occupy territory upon the retreat of  value judgment, forming the hegemony of managers and the tyranny of Others.  Unfortunately, it is only the combination of power and self-interest that sustains the  industry of major international art exhibitions, endlessly creating the typological stars  of multiculturalism and the “post-colonial subject.” 

Multiculturalism no longer seems to be a threatening and dangerous “virus,” but,  rather, is a “vaccine” that has helped a still-powerful organism called “the West”  develop “antibodies.” Indeed, through the apparent pursuit of this ideal of harmonious  co-existence among an increasingly diverse citizenship, a newer, upgraded  “post-West” version of multiculturalism has emerged. In this version, the ideals of  post-colonialism and multiculturalism have been skillfully transformed through  propagandistic strategies in order to manage difference, while concepts of identity,  hybridity, and diversity have gradually evolved into lofty-sounding, but increasingly  hollow, political statements.  

On the one hand, in contemporary everyday life in the West, co-existence with  difference or the Other is now inevitable. On a social or existential level, diversity is a  fact of life. On the other hand, the ideology of multiculturalism has also been  embraced by global capitalism, which has transformed it in order to safeguard and  develop multinational interests. As a result, a “multicultural management mechanism”  has replaced critical multiculturalism, and the negotiation of difference has resulted in  a new policy of domination. Calls for diversity, tolerance, and for letting the Other  speak in the halls of government have become tools of political propaganda as well as  of a new ideology of global capital. The task of the artist exposing the complexities  and contradictions of this political predicament is significant once again.  

However, in the last forty years, politics has been transformed into politics of  discourse, which is a producer of identity politics, representation politics, and  translation politics. In the realm of politics, art is an agent of control and, in the realm  of art, politics become a prosthesis of significance. A prosthesis implies some sort of  handicap. What is the apparent handicap within contemporary art that requires a  prosthesis? Can the artist’s critique of society and history be effectively applied in the  real political world? Or is artistic discourse and action (handicapped or not) doomed  to remain outside the realm of politics?  

Today, when multiculturalism has witnessed a transformation from critical  enlightenment to a politics of control and management, can we still talk about  creativity, discourse among equals, and the voice of the Other? In an age of value  negotiation, in the condition of multi-vocal modernity, and a non-linear historical  view, can we still speak about the future?  

Today, what is important is not the definition of “here” and “now” within a dualist  paradigm of the global and the local. What is imperative is to develop a long-term  historical vision and to approach our different pasts and our collective futures. What  kind of society is possible if we abandon the national state and the temporal world  view that structures the modern world? In the struggle between global capitalism and  the aspirations and doctrines of an ideal, multicultural society constructed on the  premises of inclusion and equality, have we lost an emerging world? Has the Other,  who once signaled the crossing of known boundaries, the transcendence of the living  space and the realm of the imagination, been institutionalized, and lost his or her  identifying characteristics and become homogenized? How do we talk about the  forthcoming “order” without relapsing into the language of imperialism or tribalism?  Can we reconstruct our history, plan an open future, and create a diverse and  undetermined pact with the present by going beyond the cultural mechanism of nation  and country? 

 

II.  

Over the past twenty years, two influential discourses in international academic  circles—multiculturalism and “the clash of civilizations”—have conjured up different  pictures of the world. On one side, some discussions around multiculturalism  attempted to represent a positive statement about the post-colonial global village; on  the other side, the theorists of “the clash of civilizations,” led by the American  political scientist Samuel Huntington (1927–2008), revealed new global tensions of  ideas, values, and beliefs after the end of the Cold War. At the forefront of intellectual  discourse today, we can find clear arguments that counter these two discourses.  Regarding the former, the Slovenian cultural critic Slavoj Zizek (b. 1949) questions  whether it is multiculturalism or the cultural logic of transnational capitalism.  Regarding the latter, the Vietnamese American artist Trinh T. Minh-ha (b. 1952) has  shown us the First World in the Third World, and a Third in the First. In the face of  the current global financial crisis, the discourses of Zizek and Trinh T. Minh-ha are  especially significant. Within what framework should we discuss the present  world—this pluralistic global-local conglomerate—carrying as it does the collective  fate of mankind? East and west, south and north, developed and developing countries,  First World and Third World—these traditional dualist models no longer seem  adequate to describe today’s world where culture and politics, power and capital, self  and Other are intertwined. We need a system for the reconfiguration of cultural  identity and new mechanisms for knowledge production. This requires the  establishment of a new cultural subjectivity.  

The Turkish Sinologist Atif Dirlik (b. 1940) has explored an important antinomy in  the globalization process of the capitalist market that exists between cultural  homogenization and heterogenization. He points out that whether the world develops  towards homogenization or heterogenization depends on which aspect we look at and  what sort of meaning we assign to what we see. This is because homogenization and  heterogenization not only take place with the progression of the logic of economy and  race, but also as a consequence of cultural development that grasps and manipulates  difference. Dirlik’s discussion of homogenization and heterogenization implies an  anxiety about the modes of production of globalized culture. Complex cultural  integration is taking place everywhere in the modern world and is known as “cultural  hybridity” in the jargon of contemporary cultural studies. Hybridity is not the same as  the theory of “cultural integration” that was highly influential in twentieth-century  China. As a concept within cultural criticism, hybridity eliminates the tension and  conflict between identification and difference and between homogenization and  heterogenization, as though all intricate contradictions and differences are recognized.  But the question is, does cultural hybridity suggest the possibility of a new mode of  cultural production? The concept of hybridity is so general as to be superficial, and  does not resolve the question of what constitutes cultural homogenization and  heterogenization, but, instead, seems only to sidestep and eliminate it. One might say  that hybridity is becoming a synonym for a confused, abstract, mixed notion of  culture that is not bound by values. More importantly, hybridity no longer signals the  production and negotiation of difference, but, rather, is a rough generalized  description of the present situation. As such, it disguises dialogue and struggles  between different cultures in the global-local context; it deflects the possibility of  cultural production in the global flow of symbols, forms, and ideas. 

We must confront the far more complex and mobile state of cultural production in the  global-local context. Here, what we should consider is no longer hybridity and  “creolization,” but re-signification in the interaction between global and local. In this  process of re-signification and cultural recoding, the issue of  homogenization-heterogenization becomes part of the production process of global  capitalism, and is no longer just an introspective post-colonial self-imagination.  

 

III.  

James Cantalupo (1943–2004), the former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of  McDonald’s Corporation, once said: “It is the aim of McDonald’s to become a part of  local culture as much as possible. . . . People call us ‘multinational.’ I prefer to call  ourselves ‘multi-local.’” 1 Cantalupo’s remarks clearly point out the multi-local  character of today’s capital, which is totally different from what we usually call  international. In contemporary life, international has little to do with the Internationale  anthem and its revolutionary ideals of liberating all mankind, where, in China, its  sentiment is still manifested as a concept and desire of current development. From  Shenzhen’s Window of the World amusement theme park to Yiwu’s international  small commodity market, from the contrasting sights on either side of the river at the  Shanghai Bund to the theme song of the Beijing Olympics that promotes “One World,  One Dream,” the idea of the “international” is manifested in different ways in  contemporary Chinese society. Cantalupo’s reference to the multi-local implies more  than just transnational capitalism in the post-Cold War era with its hegemonic  overtones. Indeed, trans-national is often the subtext of “inter-national,” presaging the  capitalist cultural strategy of localization in the process of globalization.  

This cultural strategy is applied within a post-international context or the complex  interaction between global and local. In a canonical “international space,” such as an  international airport, we see identical multinational brands, unique local specialties,  and travelers with suspended identities. Here, there are clear distinctions between  homogeneous and heterogeneous, between international and national. But in the  post-international context, everything is ambiguous. Nationalism can be a feature of  the cultural policy of a nation or the cultural marketing strategy of multinational  capital. By re-packaging themselves with local cultural elements, multinational  enterprises redefine the cultural character of their products. This strategy greatly  enhances the ability of capital and consumption to penetrate into quite diverse local  societies. In this process of localization, global capital reinvents itself and becomes  multi-local.  

Globalization not only creates sameness, it also creates divisions. Over the past few  decades, production of difference has been a core concern of intellectuals. But today,  the most important differences of time, space, and society are realized by the  production and consumption of global capitalism.  

 

IV.  

Last year, the Hollywood animation film Kung Fu Panda became a worldwide hit and  had an especially enthusiastic reception in China. Its American director, John  Stevenson, remarked that the film was a tribute to Chinese culture, a “love letter written to China.” Indeed, the movie abounds with typical Chinese elements from the  panda to martial arts, landscape to architecture, Chinese characters to firecrackers,  chopsticks to noodles. In its soundtrack with a distinct Chinese flavor, scored by the  Hollywood-based German composer Hans Zimmer (b. 1957) and the British  composer John Powell (b. 1963), and in its use of Chinese terms such as shifu (master), we can feel the sincerity of this “tribute.” However, this “love letter written  to China” is a hybrid of Chinese vocabulary and Hollywood syntax.  

From the much criticized Mulan2 to the acclaimed Kung Fu Panda today, Hollywood  has apparently deepened its understanding of China. This is shown not only in the  more accurate use of cultural signs, but also in the creation of authentic Chinese  settings and mood. More important, unlike Mulan, Kung Fu Panda does not simply  employ a Chinese story and Chinese symbols, but it also borrows heavily from the  camera style and forms of Chinese film, especially Hong Kong action cinema. Those  familiar with Hong Kong films can easily detect the influence of actors Jackie Chan  (b. 1954) and Stephen Chow (b. 1962) in the film. It is said that the two characters K.  G. Shaw and J. R. Shaw are the director’s tribute to the Shaw Brothers, the largest  producers of Hong Kong kung fu movies in the 1970s. An Internet article reveals how  Kung Fu Panda drew on the conventions of Hong Kong film:  

 

From the director’s interview, we know that the scene where Shifu gives the giant  panda Po training in martial arts through the game of snatching buns was borrowed  from a Jackie Chan film. Rather nervously, they asked Jackie Chan to come and see it  and he was full of praise for it. Actually, Po the panda is based entirely on Jackie  Chan—with his lively facial expression, exaggerated body language, humorous  martial arts moves and acrobatic jumps. Po is given all the martial arts skills of Jackie  Chan, who was also asked to dub the role of Monkey. The way Po falls clumsily to the  ground is just like a trademark Stephen Chow move. Even in the final duel, we can  see Chow’s famous trick of stepping on the opponent’s toes. Kung Fu Panda also  takes inspiration from Ang Lee. In the opening scene, the panda, wearing a cape and a  bamboo hat shielding his eyes, walks into a little shop, orders a bottle of wine and  then starts a fight with a few challengers. . . . This familiar scene is taken from the inn  scene with Jen in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. In terms of the presentation of  martial arts, the trick of standing on a tree branch and flying through the air doing  splits is Chinese kung fu that Americans learned from Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger.3 

 

But no matter how much we emphasize the Chinese influence on Kung Fu Panda, the  fact remains that China is still an object that is being described in the film, a typical  example of representation of the Other. For Hollywood, telling the story of the Other  does not involve only the question of who has the power of discourse—it is also a  lucrative business. In China, the film grossed over ten million renminbi, its highest  box office revenue worldwide. The overwhelmingly positive reception by Chinese  audiences was not a result just of the Chinese subject matter, but of a sense of  familiarity brought about by Hollywood’s emulation of Hong Kong cinema. At the  same time, we should not forget that Jackie Chan and Stephen Chow have been  heavily influenced by Hollywood. Hollywood copies Hong Kong cinema, which used  to copy Hollywood, and sells the Hollywood version of a Chinese story back to China.  With this reciprocal copying and consumption, the issue of what is typical or  characteristic has become rather complicated. The cultural logic of Kung Fu Panda is:  I follow what you’ve followed from me, and you consume what I’ve consumed from you.  

The cultural logic of global capital is to identify with various “local” cultural  environments. Such localization can change its mode of operation, but it will never  give up its power as subject. Despite the vast number of Chinese elements, the  spiritual core of Kung Fu Panda is still American. Po the panda is actually a  street-dancing American youth—fat and free with a Hip-Hop spirit. The story of the  panda learning martial arts is really an old-fashioned Hollywood tale whereby an  ordinary youth defeats the monster, saves the world, and thereby proves himself. It  has nothing to do with the Chinese martial arts spirit that stresses “crying out against  justice and avoiding the use of force as far as possible.”4  

The box-office success of Kung Fu Panda has provoked much discussion in China.  Some observers argue that it promotes Chinese culture and is “more Chinese than the  Chinese,” while others call its representation of Chinese culture superficial and a  “another [example of] cultural and capitalist invasion.”5 But today, we can no longer  judge cultural production and consumption simply from a nationalist or traditionalist  standpoint. Whether we consider identification or difference, identity politics or  symbol economy, internationalization or nationalism, they have all been assimilated  into the marketing strategies of global capital in various local markets. Can we say  that the Chinese elements in Kung Fu Panda, the localization strategy of McDonald’s,  and the cultural codes of Chinese contemporary art all follow the same logic? What is  the difference between cultural and economic nationalism and putting a local brand on  global products? It is hard to differentiate between the recoding of cultural meaning  and the manipulation of meaning in the marketing of goods. What is global and what  is local? This is now the major question. The relationship between cultural  re-signification of the local, nationalism, and the localization marketing strategy of  global capital, is equally complex and difficult to determine.  

In the 1950s, the renowned Sinologist Joseph Levenson (1920–1969) refers to that,  the West has changed China’s language, while China has expanded the Western  vocabulary. Half a century later, the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas (b. 1944) laments  that China has changed the world, but does so without a blueprint. The remarks of  Levenson and Koolhaas represent two different Western views of China during  different periods. However, in the face of the present global flow of symbols and  capital-cultural production, these two views of China are too simple. Kung Fu Panda has created a new global fashion of chinoiserie. It is said that Hollywood versions of  The Tale of the White Serpent, Journey to the West, and Dream of the Red Chamber 

will be made in the next few years. As long as the Chinese economy continues to  boom, this trend will continue. But this new tendency in China for things Chinese is  very different from the passion for chinoiserie popular in eighteenth- and  nineteenth-century Europe. Its site of consumption is first of all in Chinese territory,  and its production mechanism is also far more complex, involving, as it does,  continued reciprocal copying and consumption.  

 

V.  

In a 1983 article, the Italian author Italo Calvino (b. 1923) reminded us that in the  Odyssey, the story of Odysseus’ journey home already exists before the protagonist’s  return.6 That is to say, the story precedes the events that it narrates. One needs to find, remember, and think about the journey home, since there is a real danger that the  return journey may have been forgotten before it even takes place. To trace the return  journey, one cannot rely on simple memory alone. Memory matters only when it has  condensed past traces and future plans. The return journey must be planned and  repeatedly told. This telling is not a review of the past but a preview of the future.  Thus, the return journey becomes the exit from the labyrinth that is reality—both the  point of departure and the way out.  

In the Odyssey, Odysseus’ faithful wife is an important character. Her name, Penelope,  means “web” or “woof” in Greek. To fend off her many odious suitors, this faithful  and clever wife devised the trick of weaving a burial shroud by day and undoing it by  night. This is not the decisive stratagem suggested by Odysseus to end waiting (the  Trojan Horse ended the stalemate in the Trojan War), but a strategy to buy time for the  sake of waiting. In the Odyssey, Penelope is a metaphor for the native land and home.  If Odysseus’ fate is to become lost on his return and to make discoveries during this  return, Penelope’s is that of waiting and of deconstructing and reconstructing while  waiting.  

In the end, Penelope decides that whoever can string Odysseus’ bow will be her  husband. This is the real moment of reconstruction and choice-making. The criterion  of reconstruction depends on the rigid bow that only Odysseus can string. This is the  moment when Penelope becomes an executor of fate, and Odysseus can finally move  from being a wanderer, and a stranger, to become the returning hero. The return also  signifies rebuilding and proving the self. At this moment, Penelope’s reconstruction of  the native land merges with Odysseus’ rebuilding of the self.  

 

VI.  

With respect to the issue of contemporary Chinese culture, the key to the  reconstruction of the “local subject” is whether the “local narrative” is “about” China  or “from” China.  

We may believe that we are starting with the local, but this local does not consist of an  existing base. Instead, it too is still in the process of deconstruction and reconstruction,  departing and arriving. Reconstruction of the local subject implies the construction of  the subject’s introspective space. Here, discourse finds its base, and a local  perspective is established. With the establishment of a local perspective, there are  changes in the coding of the tension between Chinese and contemporary. In the  contemporary local context, the interpretative anxiety and the question of the  legitimacy of “Chinese contemporary art” can be substituted for a question about the  creation of “contemporary Chinese art.” From this perspective, we will find that  “contemporary Chinese art” has a more diverse, complex, and profound meaning than  “Chinese contemporary art.”  

The point is not whether China is the Other in modernity. The question is whether,  despite the huge success of “Chinese contemporary art” in the international arena and  the capitalist market over the past twenty years, it appears that Chinese contemporary  art was merely successful as an alternative modernity, as a local version of contemporary art. Its success was the result of identity politics and the playing of the  “China card.” Today, we are above celebrating the success of this cultural-political  strategy. We are no longer satisfied with fighting for space and rank within the  globalized edifice in the name of the Other and in the name of fairness. Now we are  considering building a new home, a different system, a historic site for cultural  creation and for subject renewal. It is the site of contemporary Chinese art. However,  today, we still lack an in-depth understanding of contemporary Chinese art. We even  lack the basic discourse and framework for understanding the operative modality of  contemporary Chinese art.  

Contemporary Chinese art is pluralistic, quite different from the empty designations  of hybridity or multiculturalism, both of which have become little more than a  propaganda strategy of global capitalism. Pluralistic Chinese art, contemporary  Chinese art, retains an inner tension, and is an ambiguous mess given the total lack of  exchange between Chinese painting and contemporary art and between academic  painters and experimental artists. The question is whether we can create a meaningful  dialogue between these different systems.  

When we discuss the choices embedded in art within the complex Chinese context  today, we should examine three areas: first, the institutional experience and the value  of Chinese painting both in the academy and in the market; second, the status of  contemporary cultural production in the mass media and the consumer context; third,  the modernity of consultation in confronting the heritage of art history and ideas in the  last century, and how to create our own meaning in the current environment of global  production and the flow of signs, images, and meaning.  

Contemporary Chinese art no longer refers to a cultural import, the cultural practice of  an alternative modernity, or a local version and localized model of contemporary art  that originates in the West. Moreover, we don’t need to worry about whether it is a  Western form or a Chinese form, or how to define “national character” or  “Chineseness.” Contemporary Chinese art is an unfinished project, a world of  possibilities. By virtue of being about possibilities, contemporary Chinese art has  nothing to do with any form of nationalism or fundamentalism.  

 

Neither East, nor West,  

Neither South, nor North,  

Now, I am here.7 

 

The poetry of Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami (b. 1940) celebrates an awareness of  the subject’s state of existence. The subject is not a given, a natural self. Instead, the  self is established through continuous liberation and practice of freedom. At work in  this open-ended self is not the enlightenment of the object, but the enlightenment of  the subject. Thus, the subject becomes self-renewing, rather than an agent in the field  of ideological flow.  

This is what the French philosopher Michel Foucault (1926–1984) called  “technologies of the self” or “topology of the subject,” an ethics of circumstance and  ethics related to the subject’s aesthetic of living. This is not a standardized system  composed of values and rules, but an open system of various possibilities involving a  new understanding of enlightenment. For Foucault, the ethics of enlightenment consists of two parts: the subject’s critique of reality and the subject’s  self-reconstruction. It also implies a deconstruction and reconstruction of the cultural  subject.  

In 2003, the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo held an exhibition entitled China:  Crossroads of Culture. With a large number of historical relics, this exhibition showed  the remarkable tolerance and diversity of Tang China. It was a “global village” of the  eighth century. The exhibition reminds us that “China” is a cultural subject  represented in terms of “civilized rule,” a community of the imagination and an  all-encompassing open subject. This calls for us to imagine the future in terms of the  repeated deconstruction and reconstruction of the “local” and the “subject,” and to  actively discover the things that are “coming” and “forthcoming.”  

* * *  

I recall the poet Xiao Kaiyu (b. 1960), an artist who took part in the 3rd Guangzhou  Triennial in 2008. While on his way to Qinghai to research local customs, he spoke at  length with various local Uighur and Tibetan poets and became intensely aware of the  “inner frontier” of the native land. He wrote: “Ethnicity and fatherland is doomed by  birth. It is an accident at first, then we get accustomed to it and identify it as  destiny . . . . Don’t we belong to a nation not yet named? As I pass through city streets,  wander around icebergs, deserts, beasts, and temples, reconciliation and dreams move  naturally inside my body.”8  

 

Annotation

1 Li Conghua, Revolution of Consumption, p138, (Beijing: Renmin University of  China Press, 2007).  

2 Mulan (1998) is an animated feature film produced by Walt Disney Pictures. It is  based on the legend of Hua Mulan . 

3 “Why do we like Kung Fu Panda?,” From the blog of Xiao Yaochi, July 3, 2008.  4 In Chinese is Bu Ping Ze Ming, Zhi Ge Wei Wu.  

5 “Why do we like Kung Fu Panda?,” From the blog of Xiao Yaochi, July 3, 2008.  6 Italo Calvino, Why Read the Classics? (New York: Pantheon, 1999), 21.  7 Abbas Kiarostami, With the Wind: Poems of Abbas Kiarostami, (Beijing: Guangxi  Normal University Press, 2006), 85. 

8 Farefell to Post-colonialism: the Third Guangzhou Triennial, edited by Gao Shiming,  Sarat Maharaj and Johson Chang, Hangzhou, 2008, 560.

I.  

At the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, the London City Government used  a sightseeing bus filled with people of different nationalities and ethnicities to present  a multicultural spectacle to the world, a gesture that attempted to depict peaceful  co-existence among diverse nationalities and cultures. Yet the notion of a harmonious  post-colonial world is to be found not only in the post-imperialist West, but also in  supposedly de-colonized non-Western societies. The greatest benefit of this notion is  that it prompts a continuous questioning of centuries of exclusionist policies and  conventions in the West and the desire for a heterogeneous, tolerant, pluralistic, and  open society. In the post-colonial West, policies of multiculturalism have been aimed  at guaranteeing an open, vital, civil society and a new West that would emphasize  tolerance and diversity. But is it really time to celebrate the victory of this utopian  ideal and of post-colonialism?  

Post-colonialism has earned a place in the enclosed and dominant worldview history  of nation-states. It has been integrated with various social movements in the past forty  years and cleared new critical and narrative ground. Its merits are obvious in literature,  the arts, and politics. However, these merits have quickly degenerated to one of  routine within the last twenty years. We often see and hear symbolic forms of cultural  critique in various international exhibitions and symposiums labeled with key terms  such as: “identity,” “the Other,” “translation,” “immigrant,” “migration,”  “indigenous,” “difference,” “diversity,” “hegemony,” “marginalization,” “minority,”  “oppression,” “visible/invisible,” “class,” “sex,” and so forth. Today, given the  existing post-colonial toolkit, these concepts and ideas that once possessed  revolutionary critical force have assumed another dominant form of discourse, this  time, in the name of “political correctness.” The formerly deconstructive and  anti-hegemonic critical strategy is setting up its regime, a “regime of the Others,”  within academia. For over a decade, post-colonialism has become an aggregate of  theoretical criticism and strategy, a catchall field of a “politics of discourse.” What  this politics of discourse has created is a society formally free to realize a society that  praises difference, but that cannot create difference itself.  

Multiculturalism and political correctness, in essence, allows everyone the right to  safeguard him- or herself, and that everyone should tolerate all others. However, once  politicized and transformed into an ideology, diversity and tolerance can quickly  degrade to cultural relativism, or even cynicism, thus constituting the emasculation of  the cultural ideal. Politics and capital will quickly occupy territory upon the retreat of  value judgment, forming the hegemony of managers and the tyranny of Others.  Unfortunately, it is only the combination of power and self-interest that sustains the  industry of major international art exhibitions, endlessly creating the typological stars  of multiculturalism and the “post-colonial subject.” 

Multiculturalism no longer seems to be a threatening and dangerous “virus,” but,  rather, is a “vaccine” that has helped a still-powerful organism called “the West”  develop “antibodies.” Indeed, through the apparent pursuit of this ideal of harmonious  co-existence among an increasingly diverse citizenship, a newer, upgraded  “post-West” version of multiculturalism has emerged. In this version, the ideals of  post-colonialism and multiculturalism have been skillfully transformed through  propagandistic strategies in order to manage difference, while concepts of identity,  hybridity, and diversity have gradually evolved into lofty-sounding, but increasingly  hollow, political statements.  

On the one hand, in contemporary everyday life in the West, co-existence with  difference or the Other is now inevitable. On a social or existential level, diversity is a  fact of life. On the other hand, the ideology of multiculturalism has also been  embraced by global capitalism, which has transformed it in order to safeguard and  develop multinational interests. As a result, a “multicultural management mechanism”  has replaced critical multiculturalism, and the negotiation of difference has resulted in  a new policy of domination. Calls for diversity, tolerance, and for letting the Other  speak in the halls of government have become tools of political propaganda as well as  of a new ideology of global capital. The task of the artist exposing the complexities  and contradictions of this political predicament is significant once again.  

However, in the last forty years, politics has been transformed into politics of  discourse, which is a producer of identity politics, representation politics, and  translation politics. In the realm of politics, art is an agent of control and, in the realm  of art, politics become a prosthesis of significance. A prosthesis implies some sort of  handicap. What is the apparent handicap within contemporary art that requires a  prosthesis? Can the artist’s critique of society and history be effectively applied in the  real political world? Or is artistic discourse and action (handicapped or not) doomed  to remain outside the realm of politics?  

Today, when multiculturalism has witnessed a transformation from critical  enlightenment to a politics of control and management, can we still talk about  creativity, discourse among equals, and the voice of the Other? In an age of value  negotiation, in the condition of multi-vocal modernity, and a non-linear historical  view, can we still speak about the future?  

Today, what is important is not the definition of “here” and “now” within a dualist  paradigm of the global and the local. What is imperative is to develop a long-term  historical vision and to approach our different pasts and our collective futures. What  kind of society is possible if we abandon the national state and the temporal world  view that structures the modern world? In the struggle between global capitalism and  the aspirations and doctrines of an ideal, multicultural society constructed on the  premises of inclusion and equality, have we lost an emerging world? Has the Other,  who once signaled the crossing of known boundaries, the transcendence of the living  space and the realm of the imagination, been institutionalized, and lost his or her  identifying characteristics and become homogenized? How do we talk about the  forthcoming “order” without relapsing into the language of imperialism or tribalism?  Can we reconstruct our history, plan an open future, and create a diverse and  undetermined pact with the present by going beyond the cultural mechanism of nation  and country? 

 

II.  

Over the past twenty years, two influential discourses in international academic  circles—multiculturalism and “the clash of civilizations”—have conjured up different  pictures of the world. On one side, some discussions around multiculturalism  attempted to represent a positive statement about the post-colonial global village; on  the other side, the theorists of “the clash of civilizations,” led by the American  political scientist Samuel Huntington (1927–2008), revealed new global tensions of  ideas, values, and beliefs after the end of the Cold War. At the forefront of intellectual  discourse today, we can find clear arguments that counter these two discourses.  Regarding the former, the Slovenian cultural critic Slavoj Zizek (b. 1949) questions  whether it is multiculturalism or the cultural logic of transnational capitalism.  Regarding the latter, the Vietnamese American artist Trinh T. Minh-ha (b. 1952) has  shown us the First World in the Third World, and a Third in the First. In the face of  the current global financial crisis, the discourses of Zizek and Trinh T. Minh-ha are  especially significant. Within what framework should we discuss the present  world—this pluralistic global-local conglomerate—carrying as it does the collective  fate of mankind? East and west, south and north, developed and developing countries,  First World and Third World—these traditional dualist models no longer seem  adequate to describe today’s world where culture and politics, power and capital, self  and Other are intertwined. We need a system for the reconfiguration of cultural  identity and new mechanisms for knowledge production. This requires the  establishment of a new cultural subjectivity.  

The Turkish Sinologist Atif Dirlik (b. 1940) has explored an important antinomy in  the globalization process of the capitalist market that exists between cultural  homogenization and heterogenization. He points out that whether the world develops  towards homogenization or heterogenization depends on which aspect we look at and  what sort of meaning we assign to what we see. This is because homogenization and  heterogenization not only take place with the progression of the logic of economy and  race, but also as a consequence of cultural development that grasps and manipulates  difference. Dirlik’s discussion of homogenization and heterogenization implies an  anxiety about the modes of production of globalized culture. Complex cultural  integration is taking place everywhere in the modern world and is known as “cultural  hybridity” in the jargon of contemporary cultural studies. Hybridity is not the same as  the theory of “cultural integration” that was highly influential in twentieth-century  China. As a concept within cultural criticism, hybridity eliminates the tension and  conflict between identification and difference and between homogenization and  heterogenization, as though all intricate contradictions and differences are recognized.  But the question is, does cultural hybridity suggest the possibility of a new mode of  cultural production? The concept of hybridity is so general as to be superficial, and  does not resolve the question of what constitutes cultural homogenization and  heterogenization, but, instead, seems only to sidestep and eliminate it. One might say  that hybridity is becoming a synonym for a confused, abstract, mixed notion of  culture that is not bound by values. More importantly, hybridity no longer signals the  production and negotiation of difference, but, rather, is a rough generalized  description of the present situation. As such, it disguises dialogue and struggles  between different cultures in the global-local context; it deflects the possibility of  cultural production in the global flow of symbols, forms, and ideas. 

We must confront the far more complex and mobile state of cultural production in the  global-local context. Here, what we should consider is no longer hybridity and  “creolization,” but re-signification in the interaction between global and local. In this  process of re-signification and cultural recoding, the issue of  homogenization-heterogenization becomes part of the production process of global  capitalism, and is no longer just an introspective post-colonial self-imagination.  

 

III.  

James Cantalupo (1943–2004), the former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of  McDonald’s Corporation, once said: “It is the aim of McDonald’s to become a part of  local culture as much as possible. . . . People call us ‘multinational.’ I prefer to call  ourselves ‘multi-local.’” 1 Cantalupo’s remarks clearly point out the multi-local  character of today’s capital, which is totally different from what we usually call  international. In contemporary life, international has little to do with the Internationale  anthem and its revolutionary ideals of liberating all mankind, where, in China, its  sentiment is still manifested as a concept and desire of current development. From  Shenzhen’s Window of the World amusement theme park to Yiwu’s international  small commodity market, from the contrasting sights on either side of the river at the  Shanghai Bund to the theme song of the Beijing Olympics that promotes “One World,  One Dream,” the idea of the “international” is manifested in different ways in  contemporary Chinese society. Cantalupo’s reference to the multi-local implies more  than just transnational capitalism in the post-Cold War era with its hegemonic  overtones. Indeed, trans-national is often the subtext of “inter-national,” presaging the  capitalist cultural strategy of localization in the process of globalization.  

This cultural strategy is applied within a post-international context or the complex  interaction between global and local. In a canonical “international space,” such as an  international airport, we see identical multinational brands, unique local specialties,  and travelers with suspended identities. Here, there are clear distinctions between  homogeneous and heterogeneous, between international and national. But in the  post-international context, everything is ambiguous. Nationalism can be a feature of  the cultural policy of a nation or the cultural marketing strategy of multinational  capital. By re-packaging themselves with local cultural elements, multinational  enterprises redefine the cultural character of their products. This strategy greatly  enhances the ability of capital and consumption to penetrate into quite diverse local  societies. In this process of localization, global capital reinvents itself and becomes  multi-local.  

Globalization not only creates sameness, it also creates divisions. Over the past few  decades, production of difference has been a core concern of intellectuals. But today,  the most important differences of time, space, and society are realized by the  production and consumption of global capitalism.  

 

IV.  

Last year, the Hollywood animation film Kung Fu Panda became a worldwide hit and  had an especially enthusiastic reception in China. Its American director, John  Stevenson, remarked that the film was a tribute to Chinese culture, a “love letter written to China.” Indeed, the movie abounds with typical Chinese elements from the  panda to martial arts, landscape to architecture, Chinese characters to firecrackers,  chopsticks to noodles. In its soundtrack with a distinct Chinese flavor, scored by the  Hollywood-based German composer Hans Zimmer (b. 1957) and the British  composer John Powell (b. 1963), and in its use of Chinese terms such as shifu (master), we can feel the sincerity of this “tribute.” However, this “love letter written  to China” is a hybrid of Chinese vocabulary and Hollywood syntax.  

From the much criticized Mulan2 to the acclaimed Kung Fu Panda today, Hollywood  has apparently deepened its understanding of China. This is shown not only in the  more accurate use of cultural signs, but also in the creation of authentic Chinese  settings and mood. More important, unlike Mulan, Kung Fu Panda does not simply  employ a Chinese story and Chinese symbols, but it also borrows heavily from the  camera style and forms of Chinese film, especially Hong Kong action cinema. Those  familiar with Hong Kong films can easily detect the influence of actors Jackie Chan  (b. 1954) and Stephen Chow (b. 1962) in the film. It is said that the two characters K.  G. Shaw and J. R. Shaw are the director’s tribute to the Shaw Brothers, the largest  producers of Hong Kong kung fu movies in the 1970s. An Internet article reveals how  Kung Fu Panda drew on the conventions of Hong Kong film:  

 

From the director’s interview, we know that the scene where Shifu gives the giant  panda Po training in martial arts through the game of snatching buns was borrowed  from a Jackie Chan film. Rather nervously, they asked Jackie Chan to come and see it  and he was full of praise for it. Actually, Po the panda is based entirely on Jackie  Chan—with his lively facial expression, exaggerated body language, humorous  martial arts moves and acrobatic jumps. Po is given all the martial arts skills of Jackie  Chan, who was also asked to dub the role of Monkey. The way Po falls clumsily to the  ground is just like a trademark Stephen Chow move. Even in the final duel, we can  see Chow’s famous trick of stepping on the opponent’s toes. Kung Fu Panda also  takes inspiration from Ang Lee. In the opening scene, the panda, wearing a cape and a  bamboo hat shielding his eyes, walks into a little shop, orders a bottle of wine and  then starts a fight with a few challengers. . . . This familiar scene is taken from the inn  scene with Jen in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. In terms of the presentation of  martial arts, the trick of standing on a tree branch and flying through the air doing  splits is Chinese kung fu that Americans learned from Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger.3 

 

But no matter how much we emphasize the Chinese influence on Kung Fu Panda, the  fact remains that China is still an object that is being described in the film, a typical  example of representation of the Other. For Hollywood, telling the story of the Other  does not involve only the question of who has the power of discourse—it is also a  lucrative business. In China, the film grossed over ten million renminbi, its highest  box office revenue worldwide. The overwhelmingly positive reception by Chinese  audiences was not a result just of the Chinese subject matter, but of a sense of  familiarity brought about by Hollywood’s emulation of Hong Kong cinema. At the  same time, we should not forget that Jackie Chan and Stephen Chow have been  heavily influenced by Hollywood. Hollywood copies Hong Kong cinema, which used  to copy Hollywood, and sells the Hollywood version of a Chinese story back to China.  With this reciprocal copying and consumption, the issue of what is typical or  characteristic has become rather complicated. The cultural logic of Kung Fu Panda is:  I follow what you’ve followed from me, and you consume what I’ve consumed from you.  

The cultural logic of global capital is to identify with various “local” cultural  environments. Such localization can change its mode of operation, but it will never  give up its power as subject. Despite the vast number of Chinese elements, the  spiritual core of Kung Fu Panda is still American. Po the panda is actually a  street-dancing American youth—fat and free with a Hip-Hop spirit. The story of the  panda learning martial arts is really an old-fashioned Hollywood tale whereby an  ordinary youth defeats the monster, saves the world, and thereby proves himself. It  has nothing to do with the Chinese martial arts spirit that stresses “crying out against  justice and avoiding the use of force as far as possible.”4  

The box-office success of Kung Fu Panda has provoked much discussion in China.  Some observers argue that it promotes Chinese culture and is “more Chinese than the  Chinese,” while others call its representation of Chinese culture superficial and a  “another [example of] cultural and capitalist invasion.”5 But today, we can no longer  judge cultural production and consumption simply from a nationalist or traditionalist  standpoint. Whether we consider identification or difference, identity politics or  symbol economy, internationalization or nationalism, they have all been assimilated  into the marketing strategies of global capital in various local markets. Can we say  that the Chinese elements in Kung Fu Panda, the localization strategy of McDonald’s,  and the cultural codes of Chinese contemporary art all follow the same logic? What is  the difference between cultural and economic nationalism and putting a local brand on  global products? It is hard to differentiate between the recoding of cultural meaning  and the manipulation of meaning in the marketing of goods. What is global and what  is local? This is now the major question. The relationship between cultural  re-signification of the local, nationalism, and the localization marketing strategy of  global capital, is equally complex and difficult to determine.  

In the 1950s, the renowned Sinologist Joseph Levenson (1920–1969) refers to that,  the West has changed China’s language, while China has expanded the Western  vocabulary. Half a century later, the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas (b. 1944) laments  that China has changed the world, but does so without a blueprint. The remarks of  Levenson and Koolhaas represent two different Western views of China during  different periods. However, in the face of the present global flow of symbols and  capital-cultural production, these two views of China are too simple. Kung Fu Panda has created a new global fashion of chinoiserie. It is said that Hollywood versions of  The Tale of the White Serpent, Journey to the West, and Dream of the Red Chamber 

will be made in the next few years. As long as the Chinese economy continues to  boom, this trend will continue. But this new tendency in China for things Chinese is  very different from the passion for chinoiserie popular in eighteenth- and  nineteenth-century Europe. Its site of consumption is first of all in Chinese territory,  and its production mechanism is also far more complex, involving, as it does,  continued reciprocal copying and consumption.  

 

V.  

In a 1983 article, the Italian author Italo Calvino (b. 1923) reminded us that in the  Odyssey, the story of Odysseus’ journey home already exists before the protagonist’s  return.6 That is to say, the story precedes the events that it narrates. One needs to find, remember, and think about the journey home, since there is a real danger that the  return journey may have been forgotten before it even takes place. To trace the return  journey, one cannot rely on simple memory alone. Memory matters only when it has  condensed past traces and future plans. The return journey must be planned and  repeatedly told. This telling is not a review of the past but a preview of the future.  Thus, the return journey becomes the exit from the labyrinth that is reality—both the  point of departure and the way out.  

In the Odyssey, Odysseus’ faithful wife is an important character. Her name, Penelope,  means “web” or “woof” in Greek. To fend off her many odious suitors, this faithful  and clever wife devised the trick of weaving a burial shroud by day and undoing it by  night. This is not the decisive stratagem suggested by Odysseus to end waiting (the  Trojan Horse ended the stalemate in the Trojan War), but a strategy to buy time for the  sake of waiting. In the Odyssey, Penelope is a metaphor for the native land and home.  If Odysseus’ fate is to become lost on his return and to make discoveries during this  return, Penelope’s is that of waiting and of deconstructing and reconstructing while  waiting.  

In the end, Penelope decides that whoever can string Odysseus’ bow will be her  husband. This is the real moment of reconstruction and choice-making. The criterion  of reconstruction depends on the rigid bow that only Odysseus can string. This is the  moment when Penelope becomes an executor of fate, and Odysseus can finally move  from being a wanderer, and a stranger, to become the returning hero. The return also  signifies rebuilding and proving the self. At this moment, Penelope’s reconstruction of  the native land merges with Odysseus’ rebuilding of the self.  

 

VI.  

With respect to the issue of contemporary Chinese culture, the key to the  reconstruction of the “local subject” is whether the “local narrative” is “about” China  or “from” China.  

We may believe that we are starting with the local, but this local does not consist of an  existing base. Instead, it too is still in the process of deconstruction and reconstruction,  departing and arriving. Reconstruction of the local subject implies the construction of  the subject’s introspective space. Here, discourse finds its base, and a local  perspective is established. With the establishment of a local perspective, there are  changes in the coding of the tension between Chinese and contemporary. In the  contemporary local context, the interpretative anxiety and the question of the  legitimacy of “Chinese contemporary art” can be substituted for a question about the  creation of “contemporary Chinese art.” From this perspective, we will find that  “contemporary Chinese art” has a more diverse, complex, and profound meaning than  “Chinese contemporary art.”  

The point is not whether China is the Other in modernity. The question is whether,  despite the huge success of “Chinese contemporary art” in the international arena and  the capitalist market over the past twenty years, it appears that Chinese contemporary  art was merely successful as an alternative modernity, as a local version of contemporary art. Its success was the result of identity politics and the playing of the  “China card.” Today, we are above celebrating the success of this cultural-political  strategy. We are no longer satisfied with fighting for space and rank within the  globalized edifice in the name of the Other and in the name of fairness. Now we are  considering building a new home, a different system, a historic site for cultural  creation and for subject renewal. It is the site of contemporary Chinese art. However,  today, we still lack an in-depth understanding of contemporary Chinese art. We even  lack the basic discourse and framework for understanding the operative modality of  contemporary Chinese art.  

Contemporary Chinese art is pluralistic, quite different from the empty designations  of hybridity or multiculturalism, both of which have become little more than a  propaganda strategy of global capitalism. Pluralistic Chinese art, contemporary  Chinese art, retains an inner tension, and is an ambiguous mess given the total lack of  exchange between Chinese painting and contemporary art and between academic  painters and experimental artists. The question is whether we can create a meaningful  dialogue between these different systems.  

When we discuss the choices embedded in art within the complex Chinese context  today, we should examine three areas: first, the institutional experience and the value  of Chinese painting both in the academy and in the market; second, the status of  contemporary cultural production in the mass media and the consumer context; third,  the modernity of consultation in confronting the heritage of art history and ideas in the  last century, and how to create our own meaning in the current environment of global  production and the flow of signs, images, and meaning.  

Contemporary Chinese art no longer refers to a cultural import, the cultural practice of  an alternative modernity, or a local version and localized model of contemporary art  that originates in the West. Moreover, we don’t need to worry about whether it is a  Western form or a Chinese form, or how to define “national character” or  “Chineseness.” Contemporary Chinese art is an unfinished project, a world of  possibilities. By virtue of being about possibilities, contemporary Chinese art has  nothing to do with any form of nationalism or fundamentalism.  

 

Neither East, nor West,  

Neither South, nor North,  

Now, I am here.7 

 

The poetry of Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami (b. 1940) celebrates an awareness of  the subject’s state of existence. The subject is not a given, a natural self. Instead, the  self is established through continuous liberation and practice of freedom. At work in  this open-ended self is not the enlightenment of the object, but the enlightenment of  the subject. Thus, the subject becomes self-renewing, rather than an agent in the field  of ideological flow.  

This is what the French philosopher Michel Foucault (1926–1984) called  “technologies of the self” or “topology of the subject,” an ethics of circumstance and  ethics related to the subject’s aesthetic of living. This is not a standardized system  composed of values and rules, but an open system of various possibilities involving a  new understanding of enlightenment. For Foucault, the ethics of enlightenment consists of two parts: the subject’s critique of reality and the subject’s  self-reconstruction. It also implies a deconstruction and reconstruction of the cultural  subject.  

In 2003, the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo held an exhibition entitled China:  Crossroads of Culture. With a large number of historical relics, this exhibition showed  the remarkable tolerance and diversity of Tang China. It was a “global village” of the  eighth century. The exhibition reminds us that “China” is a cultural subject  represented in terms of “civilized rule,” a community of the imagination and an  all-encompassing open subject. This calls for us to imagine the future in terms of the  repeated deconstruction and reconstruction of the “local” and the “subject,” and to  actively discover the things that are “coming” and “forthcoming.”  

* * *  

I recall the poet Xiao Kaiyu (b. 1960), an artist who took part in the 3rd Guangzhou  Triennial in 2008. While on his way to Qinghai to research local customs, he spoke at  length with various local Uighur and Tibetan poets and became intensely aware of the  “inner frontier” of the native land. He wrote: “Ethnicity and fatherland is doomed by  birth. It is an accident at first, then we get accustomed to it and identify it as  destiny . . . . Don’t we belong to a nation not yet named? As I pass through city streets,  wander around icebergs, deserts, beasts, and temples, reconciliation and dreams move  naturally inside my body.”8  

 

Annotation

1 Li Conghua, Revolution of Consumption, p138, (Beijing: Renmin University of  China Press, 2007).  

2 Mulan (1998) is an animated feature film produced by Walt Disney Pictures. It is  based on the legend of Hua Mulan . 

3 “Why do we like Kung Fu Panda?,” From the blog of Xiao Yaochi, July 3, 2008.  4 In Chinese is Bu Ping Ze Ming, Zhi Ge Wei Wu.  

5 “Why do we like Kung Fu Panda?,” From the blog of Xiao Yaochi, July 3, 2008.  6 Italo Calvino, Why Read the Classics? (New York: Pantheon, 1999), 21.  7 Abbas Kiarostami, With the Wind: Poems of Abbas Kiarostami, (Beijing: Guangxi  Normal University Press, 2006), 85. 

8 Farefell to Post-colonialism: the Third Guangzhou Triennial, edited by Gao Shiming,  Sarat Maharaj and Johson Chang, Hangzhou, 2008, 560.