Formation of the Visiting Subject in the Age of Globalization

By virtue of the development of the technology of vision associated with the expositions and fairs, the gaze that was turned upon the whole world and previously subordinated to the white bourgeois male was afterwards made available to the public. The change is based on two principles: first, to establish dominance over the city, and second, to represent the whole world as assemblages of commodities, subject to the controlling vision of the spectator. Built for the 1889 Paris Exposition, the Eiffel Tower is the representative of the principles that reverses the constant relation between “seeing” and

“being seen” (Bennett, 1995). Suggested by Bennett, “a sight itself, it becomes the site Forming a spectacle under the gaze

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for a sight” (1995: 84); likewise, the individual is allowed to circulate between the object and subject.

Enlarging on Foucault’s notion, Bennett argues that the exhibitionary complex forms a technology of vision along with the principles of the panorama, “served not to atomize and disperse the crowd but to regulate it, and to do so by rendering it visible to itself, by making the crowd itself the ultimate spectacle” (Bennett, 1995: 68). To make the crowd a spectacle, it requires the technologies of vision embodied in the architectural form that turns them into a “voluntarily self-regulating citizenry” (Bennett, 1995: 63).

Giebelhausen (2006) argues that the architecture of the museum responds to a need for crowd control through the arrangement of the space. The multi-leveled and galleried spaces provide multiple vantage points from which crowd could be kept under surveillance, in which department store shoppers and museum visitors are confined in the control of exchanging gazes with others. In Bennett’s words, “interiorizing its gaze as a principle of self-surveillance and, hence, self-regulation” (1995: 63).

Instead of witnessing a symbolic display of power, populace is thus transformed into active bearers and practitioners who have the capacity for self-improvement.

Compared with traditional governing power, the institutions and practices of high culture enlisted for governmental purposes are of economy. The aim of the

“governmentalization of culture” is for creating long lasting effects by using culture as a

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resource to expose its influence to the population who would continually and progressively modify their thoughts and behaviors (Bennett, 1995).

The framework of governmentality presumes that audience of the museum is citizen. Nevertheless, to discuss citizenship in the era of globalization is in need of taking the notion of global mobilities into concern (Urry, 2000). In terms of museums audience under globalization, mobile spectator is adopted to consider the emergence of International Traveling Exhibitions (ITEs) in the museum field (Lai, 2004). Lai (2004) contends that in the globalized world featuring of mobility, the museum field is changed by the proliferation of international traveling exhibition and opens up new quest for global cultural citizenship. It is argued that ITEs move collections around the world as well as audiences, that is to say, ITEs make the division between domestic audience and mobile visitors mingle. As a result, the museum is not only a governing tool targeted at domestic citizen but also a place for constructing multiphase citizenship in the field of tourism.

Urry and Larsen (2011) claim that “places emerge as ‘tourist places’ when they are inscribed in the circle of anticipation, performance and remembrance” (2011: 119).

Under the influence of tourism in the age of globalization, any kind of places have to Museum as a tourist site

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transform themselves as objects of tourist gaze. In other words, places resemble “not only as centers of production or symbol of power, but as sites of pleasure” (Urry &

Larsen, 2011: 124).

In the case of museums, they are important for not only acting as destinations for tourism but also serving as nodes in a network of attractions. In addition to the famous collections, blockbuster exhibitions become events on a calendar. To view from another perspective, museums need visitors and tourism can provide a swarm of tourists to museums, as well as revenue (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 1998). Moreover, tourism also plays an important role to arts. Fine art museums, especially those that are located in the big city, are attractive to tourists such as the Louvre in Paris and the National Gallery in London. In the eye of tourism agencies, they tend to see art as an appealing approach to promote cultural tourism (Smith, 2014).

Aesthetic pleasure results from the arbitrary nature of admiration for artifacts—taste. Taste requires regular and prolonged cultural practices through family or school upbringing thus the determination of what is worthy or unworthy of admiration suggests “the interiorization of the cultural arbitrary” (Bourdieu and Dabel, 1991: 109).

The cultural arbitrary is similarly imposed by authorities to designate and make sacred particular artifacts or places as worthy of visit. Certain education and accumulation of cultural capital are required to approach to culture and art, leading to the distinction of

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class (Bourdieu and Dabel, 1991). Bourdieu’s taste refers to high art especially. Thus, to associate taste with primitive art, it would open up a new page for the discussion of politic of aesthetic and cultural reproduction.

To sum up, illustrated by the exhibitionary complex, the crowd is rendered as a spectacle. The formation of the visiting subject, sustained by the architectural design, is related to the exchange of gazes with others, resulting in achieving the goal of self-surveillance and self-regulation. The governmentalization of culture mainly targets at domestic citizen but this seems to be inadequate to describe cultural hybridity and the emergence of mobile visitors in the age of globalization. Regarding the changes of times, the thesis proposes that immigrants, whose origin is closely tied with old colonial power in particular, and tourists should be taken into account of cultural governance for exploring the features of visiting subject in details. What is also neglected by the governmentality is the differentiated taste of an individual which is influential on the perception of art. The thesis suggests that on the basis of the governmentalization of culture, museums are facing various and complicated social phenomena in the 21^st century.

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