ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the extent to which aspects of cosmopolitan debate resonate with affect and emotion as embodied performativities evoked in and by, particular settings such as museums. It also explains the relationship between the affective and the subjective, emotional and cognitive, particularly in relation to the kinds of engagement associated with the cosmopolitan canopy. The book discusses that the simple duality of visitor and cultural museum display is unavoidably and actively mediated by the agency of the museum, in much the same way that Gerard Delanty's third party facilitates many cultural encounters. It also focuses on interviews with visitors from Canada, the USA and Australia, and aimed at eliciting how tourists from other Anglo settler nations with similar but different post-colonial realities and Indigenous populations responded to Te Papa's explicit bicultural approach.
