Cultural analysis and criticism help us theorize how to resist oppression and productively relate across differences. This March, NACDI fellows and founders shared their research on this subject at the 2023 International Studies Association Annual Convention in Montreal. As a panelist for “Critical Cultural Diplomacy: Ways of Constructing the Field I,” I participated in a conversation on how critical cultural approaches to diplomacy foreground the diverse range of actors and activities that shape global relations. It was an occasion that bridged scholars at various career stages, from PhD students, such as my co-panelists, Francisco Zepeda Trujillo, Guadalupe Moreno Toscano, and Simge Erdogan-O’Connor to our mentors, chair Dr. César Villanueva Rivas, and discussants Drs. Sarah E.K. Smith and Jeffrey Brison. Intellectually stimulating and challenging, this panel gave NACDI members – fellows, founders, and friends – a chance to physically share space and company after several difficult years of working through Zoom conferencing, mass email threads, and Google Doc collaborations. While the affordance of virtual interconnectivity gives us much to marvel at, we all savored these moments of spatial and temporal co-presence.
As Dr. Villanueva Rivas remarked, we panelists represent a collection of divergent perspectives, made plain by our disparate nationalities. Yet, we share in being touched by ongoing and entwined colonial histories and manifestations of empire. Findings from NACDI’s 2020 Summit “Cultural Diplomacy as Critical Practice” urged those of us studying and working in global relations to develop a more expansive concept of diplomacy, one which “contend(s) with the reality of colonialism” and counters narrow Eurocentric and statist notions of diplomacy that prevail in such disciplines as International Relations. In his presentation on the Zapatistas “as an example of a non-state diplomatic actor that challenges the cultural diplomacy policies of the Mexican state,” Francisco Zepeda Trujillo cast the group’s refusals to cooperate with the Mexican state’s narrative of reconciliation as diplomatic activity. The Zapatistas engaged with Mexican President López Obrador’s acknowledgement of centuries of colonial violence spurred by so-called Spanish conquest and subsequent plea for forgiveness from the Indigenous people of Mexico, by loudly rejecting this apology. Instead of assisting the Mexican state in Obrador’s public diplomacy strategy, the leftist Indigenous group took this moment to espouse, through a six-part text, an account of colonial violence as unfinished and ongoing, and an account of incredible planetary perseverance in the face of this oppression. Their refusal was not simply a negation or denial, but it was part of a powerful enactment of sovereignty embedded in a call for solidarity across continents and oceans. Global relationships are shaped by a common consciousness of struggle and, if not shared, then parallel histories.
Museums offer legitimizing spaces for such histories. Yet, it is within these spaces that curators and programmers can re-present histories in challenging and reflexive ways, ways that necessitate visitor engagement. As Erdogan-O’Connor demonstrates in her case study of the collaborative international museum exhibition Here Comes the Sun, museum programming encourages “cross-cultural connections, raise[s] awareness of global issues and foster[s] mutuality and understanding between people.” Erdogan-O’Connor directed our focus to the diplomatic capacity of educational programming, an under-theorized consideration in the field of museum diplomacy. Her study served to illustrate a collaboration between geographically and culturally diverse organizations, the Goethe Institut and Rahmi M. Koc Museum, which produced a touring educational exhibition that not only physically traversed state and language divides, but engaged youth in developing their “sense of responsibility to the people and issues of the planet” by promoting renewable energy. Erdogan-O’Connor’s example, while making an excellent case for museum education’s potential as advocate for common environmentalism across cultures, also demonstrates how they instill in younger generations global responsibility and global agency, ensuring these ideals will be projected into the future.
In the international film industry, another corner of cultural production and exchange, prominent figures emerge as celebrities, vested with diplomatic potential. Sometimes actors and artists gain notoriety through controversy, but often they are embraced as modern idols because of their insight into telling culturally resonant stories, their skill at connecting with publics through the art and craft of film. Panelist Guadalupe Moreno Toscano directed our attention towards the narratives manifested in the public speech of three world-renowned Mexican film directors, Guillermo del Toro, Alejandro G. Iñárritu and Alfonso Cuarón as an example of R.S. Zaharna’s concept of human-centered soft power (2022). Her presentation revealed how, in response to anti-Mexican sentiment roused by then-US President Trump, these figures used their platforms at award ceremonies and other events as opportunities to perform and represent a kind of Mexican-ness that countered Trump’s racist constructions. Considered celebrity diplomats, Del Toro, Iñárritu, and Cuarón do not offer an official Mexican position, but perhaps this is why these titans in filmmaking are effective – as skillful storytellers, they have captivated and garnered credibility among international audiences, meanwhile swelling pride in Mexican identity.
The global entertainment industry within which filmmaker’s work circulates is also the context in which my own presentation, on the diplomatic dimensions of sport, is situated. Sport is a multi-layered media and operates in a global industry that, like film, also produces celebrity diplomats. However, I argued that in order to grasp all diplomatic dimensions of sport, we must examine this phenomena beyond the paradigms of sport-as-stage for place or corporate branding, or sport-as-catalyst for networking, and critically consider the style and mechanics of sport in this equation, too. Using the Toronto Raptors’ brand expressions as an example, I illustrated how concepts of identity and belonging are uniquely refracted through the medium of professional basketball to articulate versions of “we-ness,” connected to nation and city, but not bound by it. I argued against the unhelpful stereotype of athletes as selfish, unthinking, physical specimens and pointed to evidence that they are in fact highly disciplined individuals whose game performance relies on innovative cooperation and trust. Athletes’ practices of solidarity with opponents and across national borders demonstrates an increasing awareness of their agency to “change the game” and participate in new sport narratives of cooperation and resistance against oppression.
Diplomacy is embedded in cultural and political activities, whether it is the conscious intent of the organizations, institutions, and actors involved, or not. My colleagues and I identified these potentials by applying a range of methodologies to a variety of cultural contexts and forms. This is not to say that “culture” is intractably liberating and open to possibility. This was signaled in the closing minutes of “Critical Cultural Diplomacy: Ways of Constructing the Field I,” when Drs. Brison and Smith challenged us to consider the limits of non-state, artistic, and revolutionary diplomacy in the all-engulfing context of capitalist commodification and citizen-consumer passivity. It is easy to see the activities of sport, film, heritage, and even social movements as simply products and projects of our contemporary world, as part of a closed system that ultimately creates and maintains things as they are. Yet, as contributors to an interdisciplinary discourse on diplomacy and cultural relations, we retreat to the shelter of this system at our own peril. Constructing a field of Critical Cultural Diplomacy requires understanding underlying contexts and forces, but it also obliges us to leave space for other ways of relating, identifying, and playing.
