Multicultural and transnational Utopia realized : The Pleasures of Orientalization

Description

Multicultural and transnational Utopia realized -  The Pleasures of Orientalization

Concurrently with the increasing use of technological gadgets like the computer, laptop, webcam etc. more and more people belonging to different ethnic, nation or religious groups living in far way places share and make use of the cyber space. People communicate in cyber space for a plethora of reasons, including seeking short or long term intimate relations and creating immediate erotic atmosphere.

Though cyber communicators may not be physically together, they still have the possibility to see each other on webcam, speak with the help of a microphone and thus to create an erotic atmosphere, if they so wish. Due to the relatively cheap possibilities of transportation, they can even - in principle - travel to each others' countries and meet each other in person, thus turning a virtual encounter can into a "real" meeting.

This means that in the age of globalization sexuality has become mobile, nomadic and transnational. It not only transcends national, ethnic or religious boundaries, but also has the capacity to transcend class boundaries. What counts at the first glance in a web site for personals and later on the webcam is not the encountered and fancied persons's religious, national or religious group or class position, but his/her looks.

In the cyber world, surfaces gain utmost importance, and your "culture", that is, your values and norms, way of life, religious belief, ethnic/ national history (which can have had problematic relations to "my" history) is of not much relevance. Here what we see is the aesthetization of ethnicity, religions, nationality and even class.

Postcolonial theoreticians have often claimed that Westerners in their encounters with Orientals more often than not "orientalize", objectify, reify, "other" the Orientals. In this paper, I will argue that other processes than these ones, which are too often mentioned and stressed, are at play: These virtual and real encounters produce desires, fantasies, short or long social relations, "communities of taste", transgressions, "temporary and local egalitarianisms", trans/ post/national sexual/erotic spaces and places.

In short, I will speak about the pleasures of orientalization and othering.