Modern Europe grasped the world itself as though it were an exhibition

Evidence

This reality-effect, let me provisionally suggest, was a world more and more rendered up to the individual according to the way in which, and to the extent to which, it could be set up before him or her as an exhibit. Non-Europeans encountered in Europe what one might call, echoing a phrase from Heidegger, the age of the world exhibition, or rather, the age of the world-as-exhibition. World exhibition here refers not to an exhibition of the world but to the world conceived and grasped as though it were an exhibition. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 81 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: European curiosity was framed as natural, masking its own historical construction; World exhibitions constituted a total machinery of representation standing for larger truths; Exhibitions framed the visitor as the central point of the world (+17 more)

Broader Connections

• Modern Europe ordered the world so it could be apprehended as an exhibit #expands (0.95) — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 81