The Heterotopia of Walt Disney World: slides now online
The slides of the lecture I gave few weeks ago can now be consulted here. I used the example of Walt Disney World to illustrate the concepts of Utopia, Heterotopia, Postmodernisn and Consumerism. It would have taken me two hours to explain all the relations between them and the theme park. My presentation was limited to half of that time and only a subset of the slides were used for the Philosophy for All lecture. Don’t hesitate to leave your feedback. I hope that the slides are still understandable even without any comments.
Tags: consumerism, heterotopia, lecture, philosophy, postmodernism, utopia
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Hi Christophe, came here afgter you sent me the email regarding your Semiotics of Videogames exhibition. Very interesting stuff on Disneyland – just wondering why you didn’t take a moe overtly critical viewpoint of the phenomona of Disney?
Hi Alex, thanks for your comment! By critical, do you mean severe or do you mean analytical? I hope that my presentation is a relatively analytical approach to the Walt Disney World phenomena. But it is not as severe as it could have easily led. It is because I don’t think that the cultural dynamics I describe in the slides are to be avoided. Walt Disney World is just a logical part in the way a consumerist society works, and consumerism is a very appealing social proposition. What I’m severe about is the incapacity to create different models and heterotopias that can have their own parallel existence. I’m strongly against the systematic disneyfication of spaces and meanings. I don’t want so much to make a case against the Walt Disney World phenomena, but instead to encourage creative alternatives, to remind ourselves the many other ways to narrate our existence.