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Desire and Seduction
The way in which the multicultural society is propagated at the festivals discussed, is much akin to marketing. This vision has a specific target group, packages its message attractively and does not delve too deeply in religious and political matters. But mainly it is organized along orderly lines of desire and seduction. This is manifest in the festival’s wide range of performances. The representation utilizes simple, interculturally recognizable symbols such as flags, folklore and national dishes, adapted to the necessity of recognizability as it applies in the market, in neat accordance to the ideas of the Comaroffs (2009). Here light is shed only on certain elements of ethnic diversity. Recognizable elements from the cultural repertoires, such as handmade objects, design and food, are placed in the foreground. Complex ethnic groups are reduced to folklore and made more abstract. Differences within ethnic groups are hardly included in the representation (see also Young 1999, 100-104). Cultural complexity is reduced to simple vignettes. And only at the Turkey festival does religion get a chance.
Consumption is broader than buying and consuming products. As became clear above, it can also be aimed at the experience associated with consuming. But also the act itself is much broader than the economic transaction economists mean by it. At the multicultural festival for instance, consumption is an activity involving the whole body. Using all senses, the festival is absorbed. Not only the music and the food, but also the colours, the smells and something more ethereal called ‘the vibe’, reach the body in different ways, as we saunter across the grounds. This form of consumption that can be found at a festival, connects to the wishes of today’s consumer, who according to various authors, is driven by the desire to experience something special (Gillmore and Pine 2000; Rojek 1995).
Campbell (1987, especially 58-76), sketches how in traditional consumerism desire was aimed at satisfying concrete needs, and how on the other hand current consumerism is aimed at a certain kind of desire, namely the desire for emotions and experiences. This desire can be fulfilled by acquiring certain tangible objects, but also by consuming a fantasy of these products, or by adapting the image to the fantasy. Multiculti festivals offer a fantasy that visualizes only the positive aspects of the multicultural society. Other realities of multicultural coexistence, such as the economically unfavourable position of many migrants, are left out (see also Jacobs 1998, 256; Harvey 1989, 87; Van der Horst 2003, 196).
According to Campbell the modern hedonist’s desire cannot be satisfied. This type of consumer is constantly looking for stimulating experiences that can lead to enjoyment. These experiences are sought in images that have either been created in ideas, or consist of a reality adapted to this desire. The action taken by the consumer becomes focused on seducing and being seduced. This image of consumption that Campbell sketches is confirmed at the multicultural festivals. In addition, Campbell’s body of thought can be combined with the performative approach that is central to this article. Consumption then becomes a performance in which suppliers adapt their merchandise to the consumer’s desires and fantasies, and thus shape the performance together with the consumer.
It is not only at the multicultural festival that the interaction between suppliers and consumers leads to adaptations of that which is on offer. For instance, in England Irwin and Brett (1970, in Miller 1987, 123) researched how in colonial times the images that the English in England had formed of people from the Orient, did not match the oriental products imported to England. The indigenous Indian fabrics were not to the British taste. Therefore new fabrics were produced, closer to the received images of the Orient. And the same applies to objects which the western world labelled ‘primitive’ art from Africa: these proved to have been adapted to the western imagination. For centuries African artists have been doing their best to pander to this desire for a certain representation of Africa (Donne 1978, in Miller 1987, 123). Likewise, at the multicultural festival suppliers of the ‘other’ do their best to seduce the spectators by means of a recognizable style and symbols that are easy to place.
The Indian fabrics’ and African wood carvings’ context is utterly different from today’s multicultural society. Origin and destination of the masks and fabrics were worlds apart. But in the multicultural society the ‘other’ is always near. Thus the ‘other’ can also consume his own otherness. The various types of multicultural festivals quite often attract visitors from a non-Dutch ethnic background. In particular a mono-ethnic festival like the Turkey festival draws relatively many visitors from its own group. Standing right next to the Dutch multiculti consumers, they watch the various performances of their own otherness, not just on stage, but also in the different stalls with merchandise.
Products can turn into objectifications of the ‘other’, as in the stalls at the Dunya and Oosterpark festivals. Through these products the ‘other’ can be consumed. However, as Hooks shows, the human body itself can be objectified as ‘other’. In her article with the revealing title ‘Eating the other’, Hooks (2000) speaks of appropriating the dominated other by means of consumption. In her article this consumption comprises the carnal consumption by means of sex, as well as the objects associated with that other. Through these forms of consumption the other is actively produced and transformed. In other words it is a ’practice of othering’. Throughout the process Hooks describes, the inequality of power between the dominant white male and the dominated black woman is maintained. The consumed other is used only as an object onto which fantasies can be projected which then can be consumed as well. How this other views herself and the situation, is considered hardly relevant.
Though Hooks’s article is very good at acknowledging and describing the active, productive capacities of consumption, in her view the consumed one is powerless. In her story the Afro-American women seem to walk the street nonchalantly till the moment they are used by white students for consumption, whether just once or repeatedly. Due to the emphasis on the consumers’ actions, the space for agency of those consumed wrongly remains underexposed.
The nature of the ‘performance’ in the incident described at the beginning of this article, was not merely determined by the behaviour and exterior of the men with the chalked faces. The behaviour of the photographer and the woman also helped to transform the men’s presence into a performance. Just like my and my two friends’ presence and attention were instrumental in them becoming a performance. Here the festival’s context is crucial; it offered a consumptive environment in which cultural otherness was on the menu. In another context the men would perhaps not have enjoyed the kind of attention described. At the festivals those consumed are simultaneously suppliers and performers as well. Furthermore, in this performance the own identity is powerfully experienced, and one can even argue that the performance consumes this experience. Hence the casting of consumer and performer, the division of roles between them is not fixed.
Both the consumed and the consumer can strategically manipulate the consumptive situation. Individuals and groups can make themselves attractive by anticipating their spectators’ imagination, while the latter did not surrender to their lust in apathy. For their projects, multiculturalist organizations find allies in ethnic organizations, as becomes clear at the Turkey festival and with various groups participating in the Summer Carnival. In Baumann’s terms they are into strategic reification, or the process by which for opportunistic reasons, ethnic groups adapt their presentation to the desires of dominant groups (Baumann 1999, 139). Contrary to Hooks who merely seems to establish passivity and failing resistance (2000, 354-359), various groups defined as ‘other’ are very active in anticipating the desire of dominant groups, and the multicultural festival is a suitable stage for performances of desire and seduction around ethnicity. As emerged earlier from the Comaroffs’ book quoted above (2009), in part there are commercial motives for this: in order to sell an ethnic identity, be it for money or for recognition, it needs to be framed according to the rules of the market.