Peter Chesney: It's Elemental

I'm going to take ethnography pretty literally for a moment and reflect on the use of the words "Swiss quality" in promotional material. My research has led me to trouble the notion that quality ever means anything outside the context of identity politics. That goes for German aesthetic theory (Wagner) as much as for New Age spiritualism (Pirsig). Anyway, the idea that the Swiss somehow guarantee the worthiness of a project by virtue of labeling themselves its providers evokes a number of Western imperialist traditions. We know from Edward Said that a country did not even have to have colonies, or even to engage in conflict, in order to benefit from empire. That the Swiss are profiting from this company profiting from an ecologically destructive gold rush in Peru, well, I can't help thinking about the other ways Swiss capitalists have historically benefitted from gold extraction. As in all the gold Swiss bankers managed to hide and to horde on behalf of Nazis who got that gold, during the 1940s, by prying or mining it out of Jews' teeth while they waited to die in the gas chambers. Anyway, I'd think about ways you can stress this momentary violation of Godwin's Law. Forgive me but for once a Nazis allusion makes incredible sense! Returning also to the topic of quality, I'd venture a guess that the true test of Swiss quality is the country's ability to transcend its past and present investments in such ignoble money-making schemes.