Cultured

Last night I slept for almost twelve hours. I spent the day walking, walking, walking. I took the Skytrain to the weekend market on the north side of town, where I walked through aisles and aisles of clothing, furniture, food, coffee, ice cream, handicrafts, plates, underwear, and animals. It was so hot that the sweat coated my entire body and I had to stop and rest several times just to get my body to dry off. Traveling alone gives me a lot of time to just sit and people-watch, which is what I do with about half my time. The other half of the time is spent reading, eating, and walking, equally divided between the three. The weekend market is a good example of everything that Thailand is. Thailand is not anything you might romanticize it to be, but it is also everything you'd romanticize it to be, if that makes sense. I just finished reading Michael Taussig's Mimesis and Alterity and I think I have a refreshed view on what makes a place "authentic." Authentic Thailand isn't hill-tribe people weaving baskets, but it is hill-tribe people weaving baskets as a performance for tourists. Culture is performance. Does that make it less authentic? Is there anywhere where culture isn't performance, in a post-modern world? If it's not performance we don't call it culture, or we don't call it traditional culture. It's pop-culture. And pop-culture is performance. I guess this interpretation relies on the idea that culture hasn't always been performance, that in a bygone era culture was the authentic, rich layering of music, language, food, gesture, and craft, and that culture wasn't "done" to please anyone other than those who belonged to the culture. Whereas now culture is performed to affirm and reaffirm the expectations of those who have come to indulge in foreign culture. But that makes it no less authentic. Authentic culture is this performance: it is the assimilation of expectation with necessities of livelihood, tradition, and innovation. It is always modernizing and expanding. There is the culture of a backpacker's ghetto, and this is the same in any country. There is the culture of the red-light district, which likewise is the same. There is the ex-pat culture and the service industry culture. But then there is temple culture--people performing rituals and making merit to secure better rebirths, and the tourists who stroll about gobbling up Buddha images because they feel spiritual.

It's all authentic. Me and them and the tourists and the Starbucks (of which there are many). The reconstruction of traditional culture is authentic culture, and the destruction of traditional culture is also authentic culture.