EAS1475H: Contemporary Cultural Theories

In The Creation of the World or Globalization (2002), Jean Luc Nancy notes the distinction between two seemingly synonymous terms: globalisation (globalization) and mondialisation (world-making). For Nancy, they are opposing concepts/forces: he deems the former a process of world un-making, as globalization entails the violent imposition of uniformity through economic and techno-logics of late capital. This critique of globalization was not yet mainstream in 2002, but has since taken on the semblance of liberal common sense, particularly in light of emerging reactionary populisms from the US to the UK to Japan and beyond. While the pathologies of economic globalization are omnipresent, the resort to hostile localisms culturalizes and thus disguises the actual political and institutional causes of planetary devastation, social disparity, and dispossession. This misrecognition ultimately shores up the logic of capital and its attendant ideological armatures, including nationalism and developmentalist scales of cultural comparison.

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