If the Subaltern Speaks in the Woods and Nobody's Listening, Does He Make a Sound

As the present collection of articles makes clear, there is no shortage of interpretations of or reactions to Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. While nothing drains the laughter out of a joke faster than academic analysis, these articles succeed in raising differing, thought-provoking perspectives on the meaning and significance of one of the biggest cultural phenomena of 2006. And although their methodological and analytical perspectives diverge, these articles share at least one trait in common. Each author faces grappling with the relationship between the Kazakhstan of Sacha Baron Cohen's imagination and, dare I say, the "real Kazakhstan," a real place inhabited by real people, existing in real time and space. I do not dispute the subjectivity of that reality, but the acceptance of the premise that Kazakhstan and Kazakhstanis in fact exist is essential to my argument, which seeks not to place the country and its people on a level playing field with their hyperreal corollary, but to underscore the power relations that come into play when eroding or rendering insignificant the line between them

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