The World as a Museum in the Post/postmodern Society
Year: 2014
Type: article
Abstract: Everything seems to indicate that, in beginning of XXIth century, whole body of traditional cultural and artistic values are once again under debate. Breaking up of Soviet empire and end of Cold War, in parallel with a most rapid development of communication technologies sans frontieres, reinstalled triumphant capitalism all over world. Concomitantly with such global processes, radical transformations of aesthetic cannons are developing under our eyes, a possible explanation of such a phenomenon being related to free circulation of culture, brought about by economic freedom.The increasing number of museums and planetary invasion of cultural tourism raises questions upon nature of such manifestations. Are they a sign of progress or, on contrary, a simple culturalizaton of Western style? The experience of American californization of European culture is highly equivocal, exactly as transformation of modern world into a postmodern and, further on, into a post-postmodern society. Such globalization of mass culture gives birth to culture of tourism at planetary scale. Contributing to development of intercontinental voyages, touristic trips have become one of movers of modern economies, deeply influencing contemporary world. In new age of efficiency in which we are actually living, changes in rhythm of work and resulting stress create tensions that can be attenuated only during holidays. However, time and space for leisure become scarcer and increasingly condensed every day, so that moments dedicated to meditation, solitude and introspection appear only exceptionally. A more and more frequently invoked solution to this enormous pressure is sports, culture and voyages.Obviously, all these parameters have important consequences upon development of cultural structures, expected to meet urgent and precise requirements of category of persons represented by active travellers. For this new category of tourists, always in a hurry, rapid touristic visits should be organized, assuring easy access to any cultural center of world and acquaintance with other cultures, especially of well-established touristic brands (Paris, Venice, Egypt or Bali). We are now witnessing reorganization of world, transformed into a cultural show for tired, hurried and stressed voyager, who, nevertheless, does not want to die an ignorant. Such globalization of culture, such transformation of whole world into a museum, into a show played for travellers (the rich ones, mainly), generates contradictory effects.In his Everyday as a show, Erving Goffman demonstrated, inspired by anthologie al Homo ludens of Johan Huizinga, potential of transforming even most common news in brief into a show. In a similar manner, in his Society of show, Guy Debord provided following definition: Under all its specific forms, as a piece of information or propaganda, advertisment or direct divertissement offering, show constitutes actual pattern of socially-dominated life (Debord, p. 41), outlining the huge expansion of modern show, ... transformed into a performance, in which part of world is representing by displaying its best part (...). The show appears as an unintrerrupted speech delievered by present order on itself, as an encomiastic monologue about itself (Debord, p. 49, 46).Post/postmodernism amplified and intensified divertissement connotation of this theatrical tendency: (...) post/postmodern world is world of generalized, all-embracing entertainment. Nothing is of value if it does not amuse one, theatrical component having become fundamental cultural value in this beginning of century. Virtual reality, cyber organisms, thematic space, etc., all have a common characteristic: divertissement. (Constantinescu, p. 16) Post/postmodern mutation influences, in a synchronous and global manner, economy and culture, technologies and media, consumism and aesthetics. …
Author: Elena Prus
Language: English
Subfield: Museology
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W618453442