By sheer coincidence, a friend of mine who is from a postcolony recently sent me an interesting link relating to the issue of colonialism and history:
http://leftistlooneylunch.blogspot.com/2007/02/ethnic-foods-authenticity-cas e-for.html
>From that website:
"Orientalism/Exotification: Hole in the wall vs. 5-star. It's not necessarily true that a hole in the wall is going to be more 'authentic'. It will for sure be a lot cheaper. But a 5-star restaurant - depending on it's location and it's predominant clientele WILL often 'self-exotify' itself. I've noticed in smaller cities like Ottawa (where dining out really sucks - sorry), most 'ethnic' restaurants are intricately decorated with the things you'd never see in a restaurant from the originating country. I remember going to this one Thai restaurant in Ottawa and it was full of 'tourism' posters. You'd never see that in Bangkok. The few really big restaurants do have nice silks etc... But never quite like the restaurants you see that have a primarily 'white clientele'."
[WS:] Umberto Eco called that "hyper reality" (see his essay "Travel in Hyper reality") as a uniquely 'New World' phenomenon. Hyper reality is an artifice, a fake, a reconstruction of some real thing or even that is made look more real than the original. This is certainly true of dioramas and theme parks, which Eco derided mercilessly, but also "theme" restaurants - "Irish" pubs that are more Irish than pubs in Ireland, "Ethiopian" restaurants that you will not find in Ethiopia, or paradoxically restaurants in Bangkok that try to look "western," and complete with truly atrocious impersonators of western pop stars,
Hyper reality is the creation of the consumer society - it combines the incredible productive capacity of capitalism with the yearning for the "authentic" and the "exotic" by the public living in the mass manufactured cookie cutter world.
Wojtek