Asian Self-Representation at World's Fairs

Synopsis

International expositions or "world's fairs" are the largest and most important stage on which millions routinely gather to directly experience, express, and respond to cultural difference. Rather than looking at Asian representation at the hands of colonizing powers, something already much examined, Asian Self-Representation at World's Fairs instead focuses on expressions of an empowered Asian self-representation at world's fairs in the West after the so-called golden age of the exhibition. New modes of representation became possible as the older "exhibitionary order" of earlier fairs gave way to a dominant "performative order," one increasingly preoccupied with generating experience and affect. Using case studies of national representation at selected fairs over the hundred-year period from 1915-2015, this book considers both the politics of representation as well as what happens within the imaginative worlds of Asian country pavilions, where the performative has become the dominant mode for imprinting directly on human bodies. 1. Within exposition studies, the book's focus on contemporary Asian self-representation and agency rather than Asia and Asian bodies as the colonized subject. 2. Focus on events bracketed off as 'performance' at expos as well as a consideration of social performance and performative encounters generated by the structure, design, and interactive content of exhibits and installation environments within individual Asian country pavilions. 3. Consideration of the experiential dimensions of the cross-cultural exchanges within and around country pavilions that generate affect and have the potential to linger on in bodies after the event and to be reinvented and circulated through digital and social media.

Copyright:

2020

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

ISBN-13:

9781040793732

Publisher:

Routledge

Date of Addition:

10/01/25

Copyrighted By:

William Peterson / Taylor & Francis Group

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

Nonfiction

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.