A Decolonial View

Thea Šebková

Whether returning to ancestral, timeless wisdom in the form of drinking warm lemon water and Qigong (while calling them “Chinese auntie exercises”), seeking moral philosophy in handleless mugs (yunomi) bought on Etsy, or feeling the urge to “leave everything behind and ride horses in the wild mountains of Kyrgyzstan,” the online Westerner increasingly yearns to enrich their life by hollowing out other cultures.¹ Taking the road less traveled, eating homemade pho on a plastic chair in Hanoi, or sleeping in nomadic huts in Kyrgyzstan are all mechanisms of seeking authenticity eastward and escaping a capitalist reality that failed to live up to the promise of the American dream. 

“The East” is still being constructed as timeless, spiritual, communal and untouched because the West experiences itself as broken, alienated, and inauthentic. The East, then, becomes the cure for Western disappointment and emptiness. As bell hooks argues, “ethnicity becomes spice, seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream white culture.”² The interest in other cultures doesn’t stem from genuine curiosity but to fill a gap in the dull, consumer-driven life. This Orientalizing gaze is nothing new, but it has found a new distribution system in Instagram and TikTok’s short content aesthetics, where an entire culture can be summed up into one reel. The Western tourist romanticizes smoking cigarettes and playing Mahjong with Chinese “uncles” supposedly untouched by technological advancements… so he immediately films them. This fleeting interaction is presented as an authentic encounter but is altered from the first moment the camera is pulled out. Authenticity, in this economy, only counts when documented. The “untouched” life is valuable only when ready to be captured and shared and used to gain social capital. 

Similarly, the Westerner wants to feel unique, a new conqueror of sorts, an anti-tourist, a traveler. Being aware of gentrification and mass tourism, the progressive Westerner knows better than to go to a tourist hub that has already started protesting its exploitation. Berlin starting to feel too mainstream? Go to Athens! Southern Europe too expensive? Albania is the “Maldives of Europe.” Still hearing too much American English? Kyrgyzstan – the ultimate frontier!! Once cities, beaches or hiking trails become recognized and accessible to the masses, the gentrification-aware conqueror seeks the emptier and quieter spot, establishing their moral superiority and satisfying their neocolonial desire by being the first one to discover a place before it becomes the next obvious trend. The trailblazer finds and sets the new frontier, a more easily exploitable place that welcomes him with hospitability and the necessary viral content. What is significant about this new frontier relationship is the implication that the very awareness of gentrification becomes an instrument of it, just one country further east. 

hooks borrows the concept of imperialist nostalgia, which is described (roughly) as a desire for a lost culture or past that one has destroyed, to argue that “the imperialist, colonizing journey [is reenacted or reritualized] as narrative fantasy of power and desire, of seduction by the Other.”³ The legacy of Anthony Bourdain is a great example. His show created the template where the respectful and curious outsider finds a homemade meal in an unsuspecting place. This template now becomes a genre replicated by thousands of online creators performing that same discovery over and over. To know the unknown place before everyone else arrives is the ultimate status marker. But in today’s fast-paced attention economy, new places are consumed at rapid speed. A country, a city, a mountain range, all become aestheticized into a short reel and flood algorithms for a week, only to be discarded for the next frontier. Riding wild horses in the mountains, sleeping in yurts, experiencing the nomadic lifestyle is how the modern colonizer exercises his power to experience “authenticity.” For no more than three days, of course. 

And how is this quest for authenticity received at the other end? The “Easterner” who has for years been sold the American dream witnesses their own culture and landscape become the object of desire. To relish this newfound cultural superiority, they reframe common practices like pickling vegetables, folk health remedies and superstitions as an ideal, slowed down, conscious lifestyle in intentional contrast to the fast-paced, detached Western world. This idealized self-Orientalization, where people continue to perform their own exoticism, still exists within the Westerner’s framework of desire. Genuine respect for the Other is gained only when it serves his own social standing. 

In a different light, the mockery of the “food and family is important in our culture” sentiment itself exposes that people are growing to see community and food-related traditions as universal rather than exotic and the need to Orientalize them starts to look absurd. The traditions don’t need to feel rare or mythical if they were never that unusual to begin with. Maybe this way, we can move forward from constantly seeking the next new frontier and exploiting locals for viral “authentic” encounters; by emphasizing that meaningful connections and fascinating traditions can be found around the nearest of corners. 

References 

hooks, bell. “Eating the other: Desire and resistance.” In Black Looks: Race and Representation. South End Press, 1992.