Boutique Postcolonialism: Cultural Value and the Canon

Abstract

From antiquity to the Renaissance court, to current pop stars commissioning their portraits,² artists of all kinds have worked under the tutelage of religious and public institutions or wealthy patrons, their products testifying to their sponsors’ cultural wealth and economic prestige. As David Throsby writes, ‘cultural production and consumption can be situated within an industrial framework, and […] the goods and services produced and consumed can be regarded as commodities in the same terms as any other commodities produced within the economic system’ (2001: 1). Since there has been art there has been evaluation, in both aesthetic and commercial terms. The economics of art is a field that has attempted to establish how, for example, a work by Rembrandt should be valued in order to determine its sale price or value among the assets of a museum. While art critics tend tofocus more on the aspects of production and the form of art, the economists of art focus on all the added values that make a work of art exceed its material cost of production and become a commodity within different realms. Along with the aesthetic aspect, Throsby identifies several aspects within the theory of value that account for the incommensurable aspects that determine the worth of a work of art including spiritual, social, historical, symbolic and authenticity values (2001: 29).

This title takes inspiration from Stanley Fish, Boutique Multiculturalism, or Why Liberals are Incapable of Thinking about Hate Speech (1997). Fish argues against the superficial respect for other cultures called ‘boutique multiculturalism’, but also underlines the dilemma of tolerating other cultures to their cores, as proposed by strong multiculturalists (he takes the example of Khomeini’s declaration of a death sentence on Rushdie as the limit to tolerance). By making a stand to something whose sole identity is in the name of supracultural universality, strong multiculturalists often end up falling even deeper into the category ‘boutique postcolonialism’.