Review

Reviewed Work(s): The Expediency of Culture. Uses of Culture in the Global Era by George
Yúdice
Review by: Fernando J. Rosenberg
Source: Revista Hispánica Moderna, Año 57, No. 1/2 (Jun. - Dec., 2004), pp. 333-336
Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30203778
Accessed: 27-11-2017 20:15 UTC

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 RESENAS 333

The chapters on "El cam

sagraci6n de la primavera
Maeseneer describes Carp
of hunger in the section
interesting digression tha
these chapters are similar
logues of Carpentier's cita
writer would deploy such
ing and significant is th
bring to light from her a
original title of "El camin
mental," but it seems that
reference to the Latin Am
with Carpentier work wi
quently in his essays and in
In short, the few new mat
In general, De Maeseneer e
to light in the last decade r
ent Marxist commitment,
tion, and attempts to rei
American literary studies in
the end of the Cold War,
tance is the means and th
American culture must co
spiritualism is superior to
While the questions I hav
suggests interesting appr
through these difficult que
standing of Carpentier's r
pentier's legacy has
-JAMESJ. only jus
PANCRA

GEORGE Y1JDICE. The Expedi

Duke UP, 2003. 466 pp.

George Ytidice's new boo

the era of globalized capit
across the Americas (parti
The originality and theore
the myriad cultural studie
conceived as 'cultural' (hig
reads in this object the soc
reveals vis-a-vis the era or t
ing a fundamental reading
oretical stance is devised to
tain sectors of the hum
culture as both devalued a

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 334 RESENAS RHM, LVII (2004)

concentrating on the 'uses' of cult

to perform. 'Culture,' the author a
ferent actors - from corporations
shantytown, to actors traditionall
of power that are played out in th
'culture' as a resource, and from w
these negotiations are predominan
Therefore the interventions throu
required a self-reflective mapping of
cations of the global and the nation
goes back and forth between com
when drawing the different attitu
in differential national settings)
eschew such a frame.

"Culture" is thus part of the equation with which social programs gain
authority, activists gain public support, and corporations gain income and
respectability. Many of the cases and discussions in the book (breathtakingly
numerous and thus impossible to mention in their entirety) concentrate on
the degree to which these factors can possibly go together without the market
disavowing every project of real democratization. The politics of representa-
tion of 'cultural' difference, for example, discounted among the coopting
mechanisms that preclude the chances of any real agency. That said, and con-
sidering that Yfidice's sympathies are clearly on the side of global social justice,
the conclusions regarding the consequences of the expediency of culture in
each case under scrutiny are often ambivalent, as if the author had not made
up his mind yet regarding who takes the lion's share in this state of affairs.
Despite this problem (which can of course be attributed to the unfinished
quality of the processes under consideration), Yidice makes more than clear
that a strategic, flexible position amongst this vast and complex field of forces
(including policy makers, international trade agreements on copyrights, state
institutions, and corporative sponsors, etc.) is necessary for any 'cultural'
object and actor to acquire social value, and for any claim to gain social agency
and legitimacy. Yidice's investigation thus contributes to the development of a
counter-hegemonic use of 'culture' by offering an extraordinary number of
examples accompanied by rigorous scrutiny of the extent to which, in each
case, social justice and market demands might be able to capitalize on the ben-
efits of this state of affairs.

Chapter 1 presents the theoretical backbone of the book, developing this

idea of expediency of culture. Although this point is never clearly stated, it
becomes evident throughout the book, the concept of expediency seems to
apply not only to culture but also to many other concepts with acquired cultur-
al capital, as 'rights,' 'community,' 'art,' 'identity,' 'difference,' 'diversity,' etc.
All of these concepts are used expedientially; that is, not for their meaning or
for advancing a particular worldview, but to perform some effect. Not surpris-
ingly, 'culture' is called upon in combination with many of these other con-
cepts, in flexible, strategic combinations of which this book offers many telling
examples. Yidice discloses in this chapter the conditions by which 'it is not
possible not to make recourse to culture as a resource' in the present era, the

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 RESENAs 335

variables at play in this

that the author posits as c
Hence, one of Yidice's m
governmentality and re
Judith Butler's elaborat
that shaped the differen
States and the Latin Am
compels groups to identi
which the understandin
(instead of, for example
In contrast, Yidice argu
terizes Latin American p
But from there on, the c
ing to these two context
'Latin America' as the un
ture of favors. It is no do
ported universality of th
runs the risk of essentia
'Latin American cultura
ment of universal standar
mance seems to be devis
tive perspective on perf
quently more successful
1980s, of performing claim
The concept of civil soc
as the contradictory co
movements coincide. It
tions of the brokering o
between market require
museos comunitarios an
tion in this section.
It is in my understanding in chapter 4, when the book focuses in more
detail on an original case study, that the book exploits more fully the analytical
power of its conceptual framework. The case of funk music in Rio de Janeiro
allows Yidice to show how a cultural emergent (with no explicit political agen-
da) challenges the elitism implicit in national popular culture, how this emer-
gence announces the rise of new social actors, and how the public sphere is
the stage of a re-articulation of forces under the pressure of this new visibility.
It is unclear, though, how a strategy of 'clearing a space of their own' (which
seems to be the only framework in which the activities of this disenfranchised
youth can be redeemed for some political end) advances a concept of citizen-
ship different from a mere compensatory, spectacular visibility that validates
only the market that this youth movement opens.
These problems are shown in all their complexity in the next case-study
(the Afro-reggae cultural collective from Brazil to which chapter 5 is dedicat-
ed), in which Ytidice explicitly discusses the link between this new configura-
tion of culture and social justice. In this, as in subsequent chapters, it becomes
clear that in order to have any effect in pervasive, performative reinforcement

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 336 RESENAS RHM, LVII (2004)

of social divisions (such as those

institutions), a careful planning of
is a vast articulation of social forc
entertainment and consumption. I
a clearly delineated cultural policy.
explicit political agenda if the perf
uation of social injustice and mark
and international agents (NGOs, p
if 'justice via culture' is meant to
But here the ethical and political t
ment acquires a marketable face a
agenda, because it is inevitably acc
market, the transformation of its
state, and the retreat of the state
certain of its social functions.

Sometimes, as the author shows in chapter 6, when rivalries between differ-

ent political groups are played out in terms of representation (particularly in
the U.S.), it is clear that the benefits are capitalized by the market economy,
which only grows with the sale of representations of an imaginary diversity and
democracy. A global, or at least transnational, movement capable of fostering
connections between sites of production and consumption is needed, if there
is a chance to engage consumption for the advancement of justice beyond con-
sumerism.

A transnational analysis of the brokering of culture is especially suited for

the art-world (the focus of chapters 8 and 9), because of the curatorial and
commercial role of museums, galleries, and fairs (biennials, etc.), and the
political (national and transnational) and corporative interests regularly
involved in many exhibitions. These factors make the art world into an epit-
ome of a notion of culture as a resource that can be mobilized for myriad politi-
cal and market demands - be it the revitalization of urban areas, the fostering
of community, the promotion of a region or country for tourism and invest-
ment, the endowment of cultural prestige, or reaching a trade agreement.
Shifting its focus back and forth between north and south and without loosing
sight of the border - as an operative metaphor, but also as a localized stage of
controversial artistic actions (particularly in chapter 9) - these sections are
examples of how culture is the shifting terrain for political contestation.
In sum, and despite the concerns I have raised, The Expediency of Culture is
an indispensable reference for any study of what culture stands for in the cur-
rent world, how it acquires and transforms its value in its circulation and re-
appropriation. After all, it is not only policy makers and representatives of
NGOs but also artists, scholars, students, intellectuals, activists, audiences, and
consumers, who have become brokers of culture.-FERNANDO J. ROSENBERG, Yale
University.

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