Mediating Cosmopolitanism:

Strategic Pluralizations of Culture in Beijing 2008

Rodanthi TzanelliUniversity of Leeds, UK

r.tzanelli@leeds.ac.uk

CCERSERSCentre for Ethnicity & Racism StudiesSchool of Sociology and Social Policy

University of Leeds

On not delivering on promised subtitle:Crafting an Allegorical Imperative through

Beijing 2008 Current analysis places emphasis on:

1. Olympic ceremonies as spectacle and manifestations of globalization and modernity

2. Modes of ‘staging’ nationalist narratives in Olympic mega-events

3. Communication of tensions between cosmopolitanism and nationalism

4. Prioritisation of racialised and gendered conceptions of national uniqueness (history, traditions)

Crafting an Allegorical Imperative - 1

Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism as interlocked spheres

Nationalist expressions in contrast to: • Principles of Olympism, especially De

Coubertin’s liberal internationalist vision• Joint IOC and UN human rights agenda in

sports-related development programmes. Cosmopolitan clashes on two levels:

1. Global sphere of responsibility: nationalist rivalries and terrorist threat

2. National sphere of responsibility: human rights violations (displacement of populations, housing issues, press censorship)

Crafting an Allegorical Imperative - 2

Nationalism and cosmopolitanism as interlocked spheres

• Symbolic impact of pageantry on national self-narration: pedagogy and performativity (catharsis)

• But universalist premise for art’s didactic potential dismisses the secular-contextual nature of nationalism

• National hierarchies of value: hegemonic narratives of national ‘culture’ strategically pluralized to produce a ‘public face’ for the ‘nation’(multiculturalism, ethnic tolerance)

• Global hierarchies of value: debating colonial legacies of Europe and nation’s place in world history (as racialized and gendered agent)

Crafting an Allegorical Imperative - 3

What ‘allegorical imperative’?

Kantian categorical imperative (Moralität) guides the IOC’s discursive mantra of universal morality (togetherness, peace, fair play and athletic excellence – Olympic Charter)

Host nation’s allegorical imperative (excellent delivery, efficiency, impeccable public image built at the expense of internal difference) as situational ethics

Post-Enlightenment anthropopoesis (Smith 2007):

the making (poìesis) of ànthropos (àno=up and thrõskõ=speculate, stare)

Crafting an Allegorical Imperative - 3

What ‘allegorical imperative’?• Allegories as community

orations (agorévõ from agorà as the ancient market) that take place elsewhere (alloú)

• Public speech (universal morality) with private meaning (national realities) formed through intercultural encounters

• ‘Allegory’ section of Athens 2004 opening ceremony: mourning the burden of Hellenic heritage for modern Greece

• How does Beijing fit into this model?

Deconstructing Hellenic heritage (ancient statue, symbol of white European

origins)

Beijing 2008’s allegorical imperative

• Constructed through technological innovations: spectacular ceremonies and architectural makeup of Beijing and other Chinese cities-venues (allegory as aim, technology as medium)

• Outcome: a ‘social poetics’ of identity, a response to geopolitical constraints imposed on Chinese ‘nation’ by a powerful ‘Occident’ in the past

• Style: techno-cultural venture communicating a form of ressentiment against imagined or real enemies that obstruct national growth and global recognition

Beijing 2008’s allegorical imperative

National public sphere

• Representing Chinese nationalism as sub-systemic violence: ‘mastering’ of ethnic difference through urban planning, ‘mastering’ of femininity through role allocations

Global public sphere

• Gendered and racialized representations of China by West (Orientalism) as systemic violence: Olympic project as plan of national growth

STYLE-PRODUCT

Semi-religious narrative of redemption

from Orientalist hell

From symmetry to complemetarity to constitutition

Beijing’s allegorical imperativeArchitecture and ritual

• Tied to the Chinese culinary tradition: ‘thin’ cosmopolitanism of ‘travelling cultures’

• Tied to ‘nature’: ‘nest’ alludes as non-Western ‘domestic hearth’ of Europe

• Tied to the Eurocentric tradition of Olympism: myth of civilisational origins

• China’s brand of ‘high culture’ enacting ‘clash of civilisations’ (akin to Munich 1972 style)

Beijing’s allegorical imperativeArchitecture and ritual• Yi Mou Zang’s House of Flying

Daggers (2004) casting the communist China as a global martyr

• Designed by the Swiss Herzg & De Meuron, but ideas belong to Chinese artist, Ai Weiwei

• Bird’s Nest (New China) spatially juxtaposed to Tianan’men Square (Old China)

• Shape of the stadium: ‘a yearning for the rule of reason, but not without passion and dynamism – wanting to show that the head and the heart coexist’

Beijing’s allegorical imperative

Gendered and ethnocultural hierarchies• National anthem sang by

young schoolgirl dressed in bright red : ‘New China’ was thus represented as femine, puerile and in need of instruction by masculinised Confucian (past) wisdomCENTRE POWER

• Children in ethnic costumes as China’s 56 minority groups carried the flag to the ‘New China’ but handed it over to the soldiers, not to her: spatial distance as ethnicised social distance

PERIPHERY

SUBORDINATION

Arrival of national flag (allegorical imperative)

Beijing’s allegorical imperative

Gendered and ethnocultural hierarchies• Handover of Olympic

flag by veteran athletes of 1950s generation erasing discrimination against women & ethnic groups

• Flag handed over to representatives of the People’s Liberation Army (age-gender axis of social hierarchy)

• Ceremony granted with narrative symmetry: beginning reflects end

Arrival of Olympic flag (categorical imperative)

Beijing’s allegorical imperative

Gendered and ethnocultural hierarchies• Olympic Flame by first

Olympic gold medallist Xu Haifeng (Los Angeles, 1984): self-trained athlete of working class background (b. Fujian)

Relocation of working class to

centre of ‘nation’ SOLDIER

(MASCULINITY)

• Li Ning (Los Angeles, 1984) b. in Liuzhou, Guangxi Zhuang, one of the 5 autonomous regions of China (southern border of China-Vietnam)

Relocation of border to centre of

‘nation’ ARTIST

(FEMINITY)

Beijing’s allegorical imperative

RESSENTIMENT• Invention of gunpower• Giant scroll and calligraphy• Seven Journeys of Admiral

Zheng He (1371-1433) across the Indian Ocean - but his Muslim identity was erased

• Invention of compass• Invention of kite

Seven Journeys

Beijing’s allegorical imperative

COSMOPOLITAN TOGETHERNESS• ENVIRONMENTAL

CONCERNS‘Martial Arts’ section (Tai Chi) reference to nature (8 anagrams of thunder, water, fire and so forth) and culture (combination of the masculine with the feminine)

• HUMANITARIAN CRISIS Professional section of ceremony opening with 9-year old female survivor from the Sichuan earthquake presenting the new Chinese ‘face’ both as feminine and ethnically diverse.

• COSMOPOLITAN SCROLL Created by world athletes (carpet of opening ceremony)

Beijing’s allegorical imperative

COSMOPOLITAN TOGETHERNESS• OLYMPIC TORCH: ‘Faster, Higher, Stronger’

• TERRORIST THREAT Chinese men forming a cordon around the London 2012 performers - reminder of necessity for global cooperation against the risk of terrorist threat