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Spaces of Identity: Global Media, Electronic Landscapes and Cultural SPACES OF IDENTITY With Germany reunited and Europe no longer divided by the Iron Curtain, where does ‘Europe’ end? Against which Other (besides America) is Europe to be defined, if not against Communism? How is the emergence of a new vision of Japan disrupting cultural dynamics through which Europe, America and the Orient have traditionally understood their mutual relations? The book has a double focus throughout. At a theoretical level the prime concern is with the question of identity under the conditions of a postmodern geography—specifically with the complex and contradictory nature of cultural identities and with the role of communications technologies in the reconfiguration of contemporary cultural (and often diasporic) identities. These issues are addressed in the context of the contemporary politics of the relations between Europe and its most significant Others—America, Islam and the Orient—against whom Europe’s own identity has been and is now being defined. The key questions have become those of power, boundary- marking and exclusion processes, both nationally and internationally. If identity is crucially about difference, the politics of identity necessarily raises questions of authenticity, of roots, tradition and heritage which, in turn, lead into questions of race and ethnicity. Spaces of Identity is a stimulating account of the complex and contradictory nature of contemporary cultural identities, and important reading for all concerned with the threads from which the pattern of our contemporary identities are being woven. David Morley is Reader in Communication Studies at Goldsmiths’ College, London. Kevin Robins is Reader in Cultural Geography and a Researcher at the Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies, University of Newcastle upon Tyne. SPACES OF IDENTITY Global Media, Electronic Landscapes and Cultural Boundaries David Morley and Kevin Robins London and New York First published in 1995 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002. © 1995 David Morley and Kevin Robins All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 0-203-42297-X Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-73121-2 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-09596-4 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-09597-2 (pbk) CONTENTS Introduction 1 1 GLOBALISATION AS IDENTITY CRISIS: THE NEW GLOBAL MEDIA LANDSCAPE 10 2 REIMAGINED COMMUNITIES? NEW MEDIA, NEW POSSIBILITIES 26 3 CULTURE, COMMUNITY AND IDENTITY: COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGIES AND THE RECONFIGURATION OF EUROPE 43 4 EUROCULTURE: COMMUNICATION, SPACE AND TIME 70 5 NO PLACE LIKE HEIMAT: IMAGES OF HOME(LAND) 85 6 TRADITION AND TRANSLATION: NATIONAL CULTURE IN ITS GLOBAL CONTEXT 105 7 UNDER WESTERN EYES: MEDIA, EMPIRE AND OTHERNESS 125 8 TECHNO-ORIENTALISM: JAPAN PANIC 147 9 THE POLITICS OF SILENCE: THE MEANING OF COMMUNITY AND THE USES OF MEDIA 174 10 THE END OF WHAT? POSTMODERNISM, HISTORY AND THE WEST 198 Bibliography 229 Index 247 v WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS What are we waiting for all crowded in the forum? The Barbarians are to arrive today. Within the Senate-house why is there such inaction? The Senators making no laws what are they sitting there for? Because the Barbarians arrive today. What laws now should the Senators be making? When the Barbarians come they’ll make the laws. Why did our Emperor get up so early in the morning? And at the greatest city gate why is he sitting there now, Upon his throne, officially, why is he wearing his crown? Because the Barbarians arrive today. The Emperor is waiting to receive Their Leader. And in fact he has prepared To give him an address. On it he has Written him down all sorts of names and titles. Why have our two Consuls gone out, both of them, and the Praetors, Today with their red togas on, with their embroidered togas? Why are they wearing bracelets, and all those amethysts too, And all those rings on their fingers with splendid flashing emeralds? Why should they be carrying today their precious walkingsticks, With silver knobs and golden tops so wonderfully carved? Because the Barbarians will arrive today; Things of this sort dazzle the Barbarians. And why are the fine orators not come here as usual To get their speeches off, to say what they have to say? Because the Barbarians will be here today; And they are bored with eloquence and speechmaking. Why should this uneasiness begin all of a sudden, And confusion. How serious people’s faces have become. Why are all the streets and squares emptying so quickly, And everybody turning home again so full of thought? Because night has fallen and the Barbarians have not come. And some people have arrived from the frontier; They said there are no Barbarians any more. And now what will become of us without Barbarians?— Those people were some sort of a solution. C.P.Cavafy (From Poems by C.P.Cavafy, trans. John Mavrogordato, Hogarth Press, 1971, printed with permission) vi INTRODUCTION There is a double focus throughout this book. It is concerned with the complex and contradictory nature of contemporary cultural identities, and with the role of communications media in the reconfiguration of those identities. Substantively, these issues are addressed in the context of the relationships between Europe and the significant Others—America, Islam, Japan and the Orient—against which its own identity has been, and is now being, defined. THE RESTRUCTURING OF THE GLOBAL MEDIA Significant transformations are now occurring in the information and communications media as a consequence of new technological forms of delivery. We are seeing the restructuring of information and image spaces and the production of a new communications geography, characterised by global networks and an international space of information flows; by an increasing crisis of the national sphere; and by new forms of regional and local activity. Our senses of space and place are all being significantly reconfigured. Patterns of movement and flows of people, culture, goods and information mean that it is now not so much physical boundaries—the geographical distances, the seas or mountain ranges—that define a community or nation’s ‘natural limits’. Increasingly we must think in terms of communications and transport networks and of the symbolic boundaries of language and culture—the ‘spaces of transmission’ defined by satellite footprints or radio signals—as providing the crucial, and permeable, boundaries of our age. We emphasise two key, and seemingly divergent, aspects of the new spatial dynamics, each of which is bound to have an important bearing on European communications politics and upon the development of European identities. On the one hand, technological and market shifts are leading to the emergence of global image industries and world markets; we are witnessing the ‘deterritorialisation’ of audiovisual production and the elaboration of 1 SPACES OF IDENTITY transnational systems of delivery. On the other hand, however, there have been significant developments towards local production and local distribution networks. Thus, cable and microwave technologies facilitate the fragmentation of mass markets and the targeting of particular audience segments by large media and advertising corporations. There has also been a development towards local and regional production complexes; they are fragile and precarious, but they offer some promise for local economies and local cultures. This tension between globalism and localism is, of course, occurring at the same time as the national focus for broadcasting is arguably becoming less significant and as the public service framework of national media systems is being undermined. The issue is not one of global media or local media, but of how global and local are articulated. Is it possible to develop decentralised media industries and what Kenneth Frampton refers to as a genuinely ‘critical regionalism’ or a local regional culture that sees itself not introspectively but as an inflexion of global culture and that favours diversity, plurality, discontinuity? These issues take us beyond the impasse of debates around public service broadcasting, with their national perspectives. The significant issues relate to the relationship between supra-national and sub- national spheres. One possibility is global homogeneity. Another, which takes advantage of the progressive aspects of current developments, offers the possibility of reinventing and rearticulating international and local cultures and identities. THE MAKING OF CONTEMPORARY EUROPE The European Union has become increasingly conscious of the potential role of the new communications technologies in laying the material supports of (possible) pan-European markets and audiences, and in defining a sense of what it means, in this day and age, to be a ‘European’. Its policy increasingly recognises that culture is at the heart of the European project (or, more crudely put, that questions of culture lie beneath the ‘bottom line’ of the potential profits of pan-European markets). The EU has identified the audiovisual and other communications industries as key instruments in the creation of a sense of European cultural identity. The problem lies in the vast discrepancy between the rather idealistic and over-simplified concept of ‘Europe’ which recent policy has sought to promote, and the realities of contemporary tribalisms, within and without this ‘Europe’, whether or not they have yet resulted in the horrors of ‘ethnic cleansing’.
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