Fichamento Globalização As A Philosophical Issue

Jameson starts by focusing on the concept of globalization. He states globalizations as based mainly on a communicational sphere that alternately masks and transmits culture and/or economic meanings. For him, communication network has increased due to the innovation in technologies and the modernization in all countries of the world. He adds that different from the other kinds of modern forms of communications (media) in the past, what endower this new phenomenon is technology rather than information. Technology and information slip in the direction of a cultural dimension (advertisements, publicity, export of television programs) and an economic dimension also.

The author defends that insisting on the cultural content of this new communication form leads to a postmodern celebration of difference and differentiation (a very tolerant situation in a kind of immense cultural pluralism). That means the emergence of different range of groups, races, genders, ethnicities, promoting a falling away of the condemned status (to silence, subalternity) of this groups. However, looking at the economics aspects, the concept of globalization turns into something more opaque and darker. When we have “economy” in mind, what comes to surface is the assimilation of national markets and productive zones into a single sphere, the dissipation of national subsistence, the forced integration of all countries into a global division labor. All this means a standardization, a forced integration into a world system from which is impossible to unplug (or “delink”, using Samir Amin's term). The author sees this two different visions dialectically related. Not only that, Jameson thinks they can “project their axes on each other”. The idea of identity of the cultural sphere, for example, can be related to the massification of all people, an Americanization or standardization of culture. Onto the economic dimension, the heterogeneities of cultures may reassure a rich new free market all over the world.

Globalization means the export and import of culture. The export of North American television programs represents a really deep form of colonization, stronger than other forms of colonialism or imperialism. The quantity of material USA exports to other countries is extremely large comparing to what the other countries exports. The immense “receiving” of North American culture happens not only with “third world” countries, but also with countries economically well set, as it happens with Japan and countries from Western Europe.

The author takes language to illustrate his point. English, he says, is not seen as a culture language, but the language of power and money. The American mass culture, associated with money, represents a threat to the domestic cultural productions of other countries.

International agreements and negotiations like GATT and NAFTA promotes actions that affects US cultural interests who wants to “open up foreign boarders to American film, television, music…” and the foreign nation-states that still try to preserve their language and culture, reducing the damages both material (financial interests) and social (change in values), caused by the increasing power American masss culture, or Americanization. NAFTA and GATT negotiations constitute an attempt to undermine political cultural subsidies. They want a “free market”. American film and television, along