Trademarking the Nation: World Fairs, Spectacles, and the Banalization of Nationalism

Joep Leerssen

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Chapter 1 Trademarking the Nation: World Fairs, Spectacles, and the Banalization of Nationalism

In: World Fairs and the Global Moulding of National Identities

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Joep Leerssen

Joep Leerssen
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 31–52

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004500327_003

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Abstract

Taking its cue from Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project, this chapter offers a typology of world fairs as spectacle-platforms for consumerist display culture, and, as such, part of modernizing trends such as mass tourism, leisuretime shopping, entertainment venues and travelogue literature. The mix of national self-profiling and commercial exoticism helped develop the idea of the nation as “brand” and served to reframe the nation-state from its nineteenth-century agonistic positioning amidst neighbouring enemies towards a participatory-competitive position in a global, consumer-oriented trade and entertainment economy. World Fairs thus provided a crucial condition for the nation to maintain its grassroots appeal across the century of totalitarianism and internationalism.

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World Fairs and the Global Moulding of National Identities

International Exhibitions as Cultural Platforms, 1851–1958

Series: National Cultivation of Culture, Volume: 27

Cover World Fairs and the Global Moulding of National Identities

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004500327

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 27 Oct 2021

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Chapter 1 Trademarking the Nation: World Fairs, Spectacles, and the Banalization of Nationalism

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World Fairs and the Global Moulding of National Identities

International Exhibitions as Cultural Platforms, 1851–1958

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