this was shared on behalf of fotini as seen right off of alexanderplatz in berlin—-extremely extremely disturbing!!! i wonder how the germans would view it, as it’s from Hainan airlines and either just a complete faux pas of a bureacratic slip, or just a lack of cultural competency, maybe?

but the really sick part: the fares are really really low…

somehow adding the possessive onto land, culture and state i find a very disturbing thing, in one sense, and i wonder if it is really possible to create a multiplicity of all these “my beijing”s or “my switzerland”s. hierarchies will always develop, and someone’s beijing, or someone’s border territory, someone’s right to do this or that —- will always conflict with another’s. so is the city really a multipli-city? or just the nether spaces formed by the holes left when one version stamps on another, because we would like to believe that our versions of the city, the vision that we see, supposedly exists and is true, some sort of concreteness and counter-confirmation of our own existence in the world?

i am interested to know yes more about how tremblement may intersect with this, the nether spaces and the disjunctures. is public something collective or just a throwing together of the private interests with the most money and power? “one world, one dream”. it’s a funny hallucination of the collective imaginaire.

and yes, when does the interest of an individual become a collectivity? when does the collective become representative? when and where do individual migrations influence social security, or personal sentiments? i’m not sure how to consider all of this under the umbrella of a “collectivist society” in the first place.

oh…we have so much to talk about!

A very interesting paper exploring foreigners’ attitudes in China and how identity and difference are constantly defined and negotiated. [link]

Here is an interesting journal talking about worlds/cultures. Let me know if you find any interesting paper!

“International Journal of Cultural Studies provides a lively meeting-place for international perspectives on cultural and media developments across the globe.

The journal features theoretical, empirical and historical research which is based in local and regional realities, and deals with everyday practices, identities, media, texts and cultural forms.”

[http://ics dot sagepub dot com/]