Reviewing the Western Spectacle: Reflexive Globalization through the Black Diaspora

Abstract

How can we develop contemporary concepts of globalization which understand its intricate association with modernity’s imperialisms? Perhaps the beginning of the answer lies in how we think about space: the final frontier. What imperialism means in the discourse of globalization can be seen in screen versions of science fiction. These regularly re-cycle a compelling trinity of familiar themes: the conquest of space, the alien invasion and the close encounter. Does it stretch the imagination too much to suggest that these scenarios of ‘otherness’ draw upon long-established motifs in the West’s imperial culture? These include Europe’s sixteenth-century invasion of the Americas; the nineteenth-century colonial conquest of India, Africa and the Pacific; and the twentieth-century Western nationalist opposition to ‘non-European’ immigration. Hollywood science fiction is one of the few areas in social life where the possibility of a single world consciousness is both assumed and procured. discourse of globalization, it seems to be underpinned by a distinctly European formation of imperialism which is disavowed1 and promoted by an evangelical faith in an apparently self-effacing universal liberalism.