Worlding Miss World, Bangalore, 1996. Issue 3 (3rd May 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Mazzarella, William
• Is Part Of: Identities. Volume 23:Issue 3(2016)
• Page Start: 294
• Page End: 306
• Publication Date: 2016-05-03
• Subjects: publicity -- sovereignty -- sponsorship -- policing -- liberalisation -- India; Ethnic groups -- Periodicals; Race relations -- Periodicals; Ethnic relations -- Periodicals; Ethnicity -- Periodicals; Group identity -- Periodicals; 301
• DOI: 10.1080/1070289X.2015.1034133
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1070-289X

Abstract

Abstract : This essay revisits the much-discussed swarm of protests surrounding the 1996 Miss World pageant in Bangalore, India. It suggests that behind the clamour of clashing opinions regarding the content of the pageant lay a deeper crisis, uninterrogated yet constantly palpable: the absence of a performative dispensation within which the then-nascent project of liberalisation could, paradoxically, be experienced as self-grounding. By organising its discussion around interviews with some of the people most directly involved in trying to manage the meaning of the event – through sponsorship, public relations, policing, and protest – the essay shows how a reconsideration of the pageant can help us understand the delicate relation between commercial publicity and sovereign authority in a globalising age.