Silk Road nostalgia and imagined global community

Abstract

The 'Silk Road' has become fashionable nostalgia, expressing longing for a perceived time when universalism was a norm. Popular Silk Road narratives, in documentaries, websites, feature films, tabletop books, and discourses of diplomacy and tourism, romanticize the ancient trading routes as 'our' lost civilization. The Silk Road image also signifies belonging to the newest trade and political networks across Asia. The regional invocation of the 'Silk Road' to signify belonging to Asia might seem to cancel out any claims to longing for common humanity. But both regionalism and universalism are imaginary processes, and their rich intermingling in itself can be exemplary of Silk Road cosmopolitanism.

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