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Provincialising embedded liberalism: film, orientalism and the reconstruction of world order

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 May 2011

Abstract

This article explores conceptions of post-war world order promoted in appeals to ‘filmic internationalism’ – an Anglo-American movement of filmmakers, artists, and cultural bureaucrats who became committed to social-realist documentary films throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Examining this movement, I argue, allows us to reflect on the cultural consititution of embedded liberalsim, a vision of post-war order pursued not only in political-economic but also in cultural terms. Moreover, retelling the story of filmic internationalism also unsettles our accounts of embedded liberalism by foregrounding the lingering importance of imperial governmentality to interwar conversations regarding post-war world order. Traces of imperial governmentality are visible in both the ways in which filmmakers conveived the cultural agency of ‘other’ populations as well as the universal conceit with which they promoted a form of social governance. Recovering these ‘other’ stories, I argue, is a critical gesture which provincialises embedded liberalism by situating it in a more diverse set of contexts than is often acknowledged.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 2011

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References

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32 Expert Committee on UN Public Information Activities, Transcript No. 21 (10 April 1958), New York: UN Archives and Records Management Section, RG: Department of Public Information, Box S-0540–0004, p. 17.

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59 Chakrabarty, ‘In Defense’, p. 96. He continues: ‘I have argued not against the idea of universals as such but emphasized that the universal was a highly unstable figure, a necessary placeholder in our attempt to think through questions of modernity. We glimpsed its outlines only and when a particular usurped its place […] To provincialize Europe was then to know how universalistic thought was always and already modified by particular histories, whether or not we could excavate such pasts fully.’

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71 Grierson, ‘The Challenge of Peace’, p. 326.

72 Grierson, ‘Postwar Patterns’, p. 164. It's important to highlight the gendered language of Grierson's formulation. Although it is beyond the scope of this article, the gendered formulation is important to explore.

73 Ibid., p. 163.

74 Ibid., p. 161.

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77 Song of Ceylon won an award for best film at the International Film Festival in Brussels in 1935.

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80 UN Department of Public Information, National Film Committees of the UN. New York: UN Archives and Records Management Section, Record Group: Department of Public Information S-0540–0057, Folder: Notes from Provisional Film Committee Meetings (17 October 1946–December 1946).

81 Graham, S. E., ‘The (Real)Politicks of Culture: US Cultural Diplomacy in UNESCO, 1946–1954’, Diplomatic History, 30:2 (2006), pp. 231251CrossRefGoogle Scholar . To a certain extent there had long been contradictions in American information and cultural policy abroad. See, for example, Statement by Asst. Secretary of State William Benton, 16 October 1944, No. 766. New York: UN Archives and Records Management Section, Record Group S-0537–005, UN Information Organization, Box # 5: ‘Our military and economic power is now so great that it is bound to lead many people and groups throughout the world to distrust us, or fear us, or even hate us, and not all the information work in the world […] At least we can try to minimize the untruthful impressions of this country […] There is a commercial as well as security aspect here.’

82 Although the Film Board was well endowed in its first year of operation (1946), it was fiercely resisted by UNESCO and one of its leading mass communication experts, William Farr. Fearing that a centralised agency, under the auspices of the UN Department of Public Information would eclipse UNESCO's role in producing and distributing film, UNESCO resisted the work of the Film Board and refused to commit to an ambitious version of its mandate.

83 Experts Committee on UN Public Information Activities, Transcripts 9, 1 April 1958. New York: UN Archives and Records Management Section, Record Group: Department of Public Information, Box: S-0540–0004.

84 All of this, of course, occurs against a backdrop of declining public support for and sponsorship of documentary film. See, for example, Katz, Robert and Katz, Nancy, ‘Documentary in Transition, Part I: The US’, Hollywood Quarterly, 3:4 (1948), p. 429CrossRefGoogle Scholar . See also their review of international film initiatives in Katz, Robert and Katz, Nancy, ‘Documentary in Transition II: The International Scene and the American Documentary’, Hollywood Quarterly, 4:1 (1949), p. 64CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

85 The left-liberal leanings of some members of the movement, and the allegiance even Grierson felt to Soviet filmmaking, marked the movement out, in some circles, as untrustworthy.

86 Maclaren, Norman (director), Neighbours/Voisins (Montreal: National Film Board of Canada, 1952)Google Scholar .

87 See, for example, Engerman, David, ‘American Knowledge and Global Power’, Diplomatic History, 31:4 (2007), pp. 604605CrossRefGoogle Scholar .