ABSTRACT
Exotics-to-the-West will be seen as consumers and re-creators of exoticism who communicate through a world-capitalist web of exoticizing representations. Exoticism fits each "uncivilized," non-Western, or Western-alternative being, however uncomfortably, into a pocket. However, in order to exalt their respective national characters and to demonstrate to the world their unmediated, subversive encounters, Japanese and Argentinean tangueros made a spectacle of themselves and of their contacts. Exotics are identified in terms of the qualities of passion they offer to the agent of exoticism, but the passion of the exotics is molded by the exoticizer's Desire. Argentina and Japan could not escape from framing their tango exchanges within a series of exotic reciprocities, immersed as they were in exotic parameters of representation imposed on the world through a hegemonic Western music and dance industry. Argentinean tango music was available in Japan through recordings, and pretty soon Japanese musicians were playing the tunes.
