"Currently, the commodification of difference promotes paradigms of consumption wearing whatever difference the Other and habits is eradicated, via exchange, by consumer cannibalism that not only displaces the Other but denies the significance of that of the Other's history through the process of contextualization."
I chose this quote from Hooks' chapter because I felt it explained a crucial aspect of consumer culture in the United State. An example of what she explains would be the one used by Dr. Cummings in class, which is a young teen in the early 2000s wearing t-shirt with Che Guevara's face on it, without her even knowing who Che was or what he'd done in the past. In this instance, the picture of Che's face had been decontextualized and commodified in a fashion that denies the significance of Che's history. Another example of this would be the consumption of Hip/Hop Rap music and culture among white youth in the US. White youth consumes and reproduces hip/hop-rap music in a way that completely decontextualizes the history and origins or Hip/Hop and the struggles and oppression which African Americans face post-civil rights movement. Executives have been commodifying black culture for decades, pumping out products that are meant to take advantage of and capitalize on black culture instead of presenting it in a respectful contextualized form. We can say the same for the commodification of Asian culture also, whether we are talking about the commodification of Japanese Samauri culture or the commodification of Chinese Buddhism, selling Buddha statues big and small to give you "good karma". This commodification completely takes away from whatever culture it is being done to and provides a false sense of confidence and knowledge about a given culture to whoever purchases the commodity. Most people don't know that there is an extreme honor that comes with a genuine samurai sword, which was most commonly passed down through a Japanese military family. Most original samurai swords have been in possession of a military family for centuries, passed from father to son over generations. Also, most people don't even realize how anti-Buddhist the purchasing of anything is, especially a statue of Buddha himself. The whole point of Buddhism is the detachment from material belongings, it's honestly hilarious.
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