Appadurai Pre Class

Throughout this piece, it becomes clear that Appadurai is able to do one thing that no previous theorist has attempted to do, that being, crossing the national border and seeing how this postmodern culture has had grand affects globally. I think, often times, especially as students that are, for the most part, well-off and from upper-middle class backgrounds, we are ignorant of the fact that people exist outside of our own circumstances and that the experience we take part in as American citizens is by no means the norm around the world. Especially if we are to call ourselves critical readers, we must recognize our own perspective as one of privilege that must constantly keep in mind the fact that, whether we want it to or not, our privilege serves to oppress others. I think Appadurai makes that clear in his articulation of America and its overbearing power on the rest of the world, and the rest of the world’s consequent imitation of American culture, which he describes as a “rich testimony to the global culture of the hyperreal”.

On the other hand, I think we are also, in a more positive light, going to witness, more and more, the transnational spread of ideas, philosophy, and language as a result of the postmodern era for no longer are we a community based in simply face-to-face communication but we now have the potential to create “imagined” communities based in virtual realities that are fluid and unstable. Appadurai recognizes the diverse flows of cultural material moving across national boundaries, and although he may criticize this new global system within an intellectual, critical framework, I think it is just as significant to recognize the great potential these flows have in expanding connections with one another and broadening our own perspective, so it is not limited to the one-dimensional perspective of simply being an American.