Document Type

Article

Journal/Book Title/Conference

Decimonónica

Volume

1

Issue

1

Publisher

Decimonónica

Publication Date

2004

First Page

113

Last Page

127

Abstract

International or world expositions have two main goals, commercial and political. They offer an opportunity for countries to exhibit themselves, to expose the “self” to the world within the context of grand ideological statements. As Noël Valis has stated, the world exhibition is a public space that allows for affirmation of the national identity, in fact “stages” it (635, 636) and confirms the dominant values of participating nations. An exhibition of that nature offers an opportunity to show off pride in the national self in an “other” space with a very broad scope. World's fairs fueled a “new, broad consciousness of international [...] concepts and expression” (Jackson). This political goal is the foundation for the commercial perspective as the exhibitions show the world the degree of culture achieved by participating nations as reflected in the arts and industrial technology (Weimann 1). Since the 1851 London Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, world exhibitions have been a showcase and advertisement for the industrial products of the participating nations. The generation of monetary gains from the sales of samples or copies of exhibited objects was one of the prime immediate goals of these events. Observant passivity on the part of the visitor was meant to be converted into consumerism and international exposure of local products for further trade possibilities. Michel Foucault points out that international exhibitions–together with publishing and other means of diffusion of information—were among the mechanisms through which the bourgeois class expressed power (207). The selection (as gift, loan or purchase) of the samples to be exhibited or sold were the result of power exercised by the dominant national or commercial interests, and the exhibition would validate this power. In fact, everything in a world exposition is a sample or model of the national cultures on display. Exhibitions are organized as an artificial space that immerses the public in a world of representations; by their very nature they create a visual discipline that reconstruct external reality as an image, a map or a photograph (Canogar 50, 51). As Edward Said affirms, the production, circulation, history and interpretation of representations are the very elements of culture; “representation itself has been characterized as keeping the subordinate subordinate, [and] the inferior inferior” (56, 80), thus validating the exhibiting nations' hierarchy of political perspectives (see also Rydell 3-8).

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