Re-Imagined Elephants: Authenticity, Authority, and Culture in Indian and South African Souvenirs (thesis)

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Date
2019Author
Osowski, Kathryn Kalady
Subject
Washington and Lee University -- Honors in Art History
Souvenirs (Keepsakes)
Elephants
India
South Africa
Authenticity (Philosophy)
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Kathryn Kalady Osowski is a member of the Class of 2019 of Washington and Lee University. Honors thesis; [FULL-TEXT WILL BE AVAILABLE FOLLOWING A 1-YEAR EMBARGO] In brief, then, to properly understand these elephants and other cultural constructions, I posit that these souvenirs present ‘imagined representations’–deliberate, economically beneficial, and performative identities maintained by cultural brokers–of their culture, which
collectively yield a ‘perceived authentic’ Tourist World space simultaneously endogenous to yet separate from the rest of the culture. This thesis seeks to employ this framework to investigate how perceived cultural authenticity is constructed, who holds the authority to do this construction, and why these constructions consolidate new expressions into Western-only subspaces of India and South Africa. [From Introduction]