The Forms of Circulation

Not everything moves through the same circuits: humans move in boats, ships, trains, and cars; pictures, words, and ideas move through a variety of other circuits, which now include cyberpaths of various kinds; blood circulates through certain circuits, money through others, arms, drugs, and diseases through yet others. Speed is a property that shapes the circulation of different forms; at the same time, it is an element of the forms of circulation. The 2002 invasion of Iraq, for example, clearly shows the uneven speeds of a host of messages, materials, and man-power, as well as media reports.

Spatial scope is another formal key feature of circulatory processes. Linguistically, mediated forms tend to have certain genres and produce effects over certain terrains. Therefore, recognizing that circulation itself has some formal properties, mainly in terms of time, space, and scale, I would modify my earlier argument that the uneven relationships between a variety of scapes–I used the term “ethnoscapes”–produced these junctures and differences in the global cultural economy. Today, I would make that suggestion more dynamic by arguing that the bumps and blocks, disjunctures and differences are produced by the variety of circuits, scales and speeds which characterize the circulation of cultural elements. Some examples and questions from Asia will illustrate this point: Why is there not greater interaction between the film industries of Hong Kong and Mumbai in regard to plots, characters, narratives, finances, production, or distribution? It is true that in the last few decades Mumbai film makers include Hong Kong, Singapore, and a few other monumental locations in their films, partly to offset the high costs of exotic locales such as London and New York, but also because some Indian filmmakers, especially from the Madras based Tamil movie industry, are fascinated by the special consumer cultures of East Asia. However, the reverse is not true: Chinese, Japanese, or other major Asian movie industries do not head south towards India to enrich their own fantasies about the modern. The question is, why not? How many mainland Chinese have seen an Indian soap opera? How many Indians have seen and enjoyed a popular film from the mainland? How many Indian intellectuals can discuss India’s relationship with North Korea with any authority? Have India’s secular intellectuals wondered why communist China has been remarkably harsh with its own religious minorities? These are all questions about blockages, bumps, and interference in what is otherwise seen as a festival of interaction and celebration between India and China. In general, it is fair to say that any fast and heavy traffic is due to the force of the market of commodities and services, of capital and its flows, and the energies of entrepreneurship. Where the traffic is weak, it is generally a matter of cultural prejudices and of various state-policies. All modernities emerge in the tension between heavy traffic and the opposite, slow traffic. In other words, while it is true that histories produce geographies, the shape, form, and durability of these geographies is also a matter of obstacles, roadblocks, and traffic jams. In order to comprehend how alterity is produced in a globalizing world, we need to consider both the circulation of forms, which I have stressed, and the forms of circulation. In fact, what we need, I believe, is a theory that relates the forms of circulation to the circulation of forms. Such a theory can tell us something useful about the reason why universities move less swiftly than, say, AK47s and why, globally, democracy is held in higher esteem than the American presidency.