Abstract
The Berlin Industrial Exhibition of 1896 introduced Berlin and its flourishing manufacturing industry to the world, and in turn brought the world to Berlin. Besides the focus on various branches of industry, the Gewerbeausstellung also featured cultural exhibits of which the Spezialausstellung Kairo was the most popular and formidable. My paper is looking at print material published in the wake of the exhibition and the way academic and entertainment discourses as well as visual and textual aspects relate to each other within these texts. Of special interest are the official guidebook for the Cairo exhibit and the comical novel "Hotel Buchholz", which depicts the industrial exhibition from the perspective of a bourgeois Berlin housewife. Using Marx’s notion of the commodity fetish and Debord’s writing on the spectacle, I explore how these publications mediated and negotiated the novelty of presenting Egyptian culture within the framework of a politically controversial exhibition that attempted to straddle the divide between regional and international.
| Original language | English |
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| State | Published - Mar 22 2019 |
| Event | 50th Annual Convention of the NeMLA - Washington, DC Duration: Mar 22 2019 → Mar 22 2019 |
Conference
| Conference | 50th Annual Convention of the NeMLA |
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| Period | 03/22/19 → 03/22/19 |