In the wake of globalization, cultural forms of expression have become
increasingly detached from their places of origin, circulating in a
hyper-domain of culture where there is no real difference anymore
between indigenous and foreign, near and far, the familiar and the
exotic. Heterogeneous cultural contents are brought together side by
side, like the fusion food that makes free use of all that the
hypercultural pool of spices, ingredients and ways of preparing food has
to offer. Culture is becoming un-bound, un-restricted, un-ravelled: a
hyperculture. It is a profoundly rhizomatic culture of intense
hybridization, fusion and co-appropriation. Today we have all become
hypercultural tourists, even in our 'own' culture, to which we do not
even belong anymore. Hypercultural tourists travel in the hyperspace of
events, a space of cultural sightseeing. They experience culture as
cul-tour.
Drawing on thinkers from Hegel and Heidegger to Bauman and Homi Bhabha
to examine the characteristics of our contemporary hyperculture, Han
poses the question: should we welcome the human of the future as the
hypercultural tourist, smiling serenely, or should we aspire to a
different way of being in the world?
