Screen Capitalism and the Popular Discourse of Difference on Xinjiang
A presentation by Selim Hai Peng
Thursday, April 14, 201611:00 AM - 1:00 PM
6th Floor in Bunche Hall Room 6345
Benedict Anderson successfully set the paradigm in which different localities within a polity imagine each other as belonging to a shared community via the media of print capitalism, thus homogenizing the barriers of “difference” in configuring a community. Yet as the 21 century nears the end of its second decade, newspapers or print capitalism are increasingly being de-centered and sabotaged by audio-visual media when it comes to representing different localities. First and foremost a consumer commodity in a market economy, cinematic representations of local realities often seek to highlight “differences” rather than suppress them, responding to what the viewers want to see instead of what the elite newspaper editors want them to see. Thus while print capitalism is in a profound crisis, “screen capitalism” is thriving on the diffusion and democratization of visual culture through its myriad forms of audio visual images. This paper, taking as its case study of how Xinjiang, a geographical locality in the vast territorial entity of China is represented in three audio visual productions made after the 1980s market reform, seeks to establish how screen capitalism produces and reinforces the popular discourse of difference on the region and what implications and ramifications this discourse of difference holds for the Xinjiang region and its peoples.