Cannibal Culture: Art, Appropriation, and the Commodification of Difference (Icon Editions)

Synopsis

In Arizona, a white family buys a Navajo-style blanket to be used on the guest-room bed. Across the country in New York, opera patrons weep to the death scene of Madam Butterfly. These seemingly unrelated events intertwine in Cannibal Culture as Deborah Root examines the ways Western art and Western commerce co-opt, pigeonhole, and commodify so-called “native experiences.” From nineteenth-century paintings of Arab marauders to our current fascination with New Age shamanism, Root explores and explodes the consumption of the Other as a source of violence, passion, and spirituality. Through advertising images and books and films like The Sheltering Sky, Cannibal Culture deconstructs our passion for tourism and the concept of “going native,” while providing a withering indictment of a culture in which every cultural artifact and ideology is up for grabs—a cannibal culture. This fascinating book raises important and uncomfortable questions about how we travel, what we buy, and how we determine cultural merit. Travel—be it to another country, to a museum, or to a supermarket—will never be the same again.

Copyright:

1996

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

ISBN-13:

9780429981524

Related ISBNs:

9780429501890, 9780367314774, 9780367314774, 9780813320892, 9780813320892, 9780813320885, 9780813320885

Publisher:

Taylor and Francis

Date of Addition:

06/19/20

Copyrighted By:

Taylor and Francis

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

Entertainment, Nonfiction, Art and Architecture, Sociology

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.