That Surprised Chain Feeling
Francis Raven
My girlfriend and I often study at this little Cal-Ital Coffee House, Torrefazione. It's located in
Palo Alto, California about 6 blocks from our house. There's a light airy feel that strikes you
as Californian especially when you're able to find a seat in the small loft and sip your
cappuccino from a hand painted porcelain mug.
I'd always thought that the people who worked there were from Italy who had just recently
started an authentic (and in this respect unique) Italian coffee shop in order to work out their
version of the American Dream. You can already see a certain sort of racial prejudice in my
idea of authenticity.
But then one Tuesday I was walking in San Francisco and I noticed that there was another
coffee shop called Torrefazione. At first, I thought that it must just be a coincidence, but then
I walked in and sure enough it was almost exactly the same as the Torrefazione in Palo Alto,
except that they didn't have a loft. And I had that experience of realizing that an
establishment that you support is actually just a franchise in a chain. This is an occurrence
that is becoming more and more common, almost to the point of ubiquity. It has happened to
me twice in the past month and from informally polling people I have learned that it is not at
all an uncommon experience.
The feeling associated with this experience could be called "that surprised chain feeling" and
I'm not quite sure where it fits in the spectrum of feelings. It's a kind of disappointment mixed
with the feeling of betrayal. Contempt is involved in it. The sort of guilt one feels at
Starbucks is also associated with it. And, not least, the sinking feeling of embarrassment is
also inextricably bound to it.
I almost had the same disappointed chain experience at Peet's Coffee & Tea, but I knew
better. I guessed that it was probably a chain. There were too many generic items (which
could all have been copies) associated with it for it not to have been. In other words, it did
not pull off the appearance of being unique, not that it tried to. The philosophically interesting
point about "the surprised chain feeling" is that it revolves around the dichotomy between
original and copy. The original item, or store in this case, is always more valuable than the
copy. But as has been shown by contemporary philosophers, the original depends upon the
existence of the copy for its identity as original.
There is always the fear in life that you're not an original; that you are merely a copy of
someone else's way of living; that you haven't really decided, merely taken someone else's
word that you've decided, on your life. This is the fear that is brought to the fore when you
discover that something you love is merely a copy, merely a franchise, and also, and more
generally, merely a commodity.
This fear also has a positive side. It is similar to the philosopher Richard Rorty's idea of the
ironist. He writes that when the ironist "philosophizes about her situation, she does not think
her vocabulary is closer to reality than others, that it is in touch with a power not
herself"(Contingency, irony, and solidarity Cambridge University Press 1989). The ironist isn't interested in the authentic,
unique experience, because she knows that it is possible that every authentic, unique
experience is underwritten by an experience that is merely a copy, merely a franchise. As a
human in the postmodern world it is important to be able to swirl an experience or idea back
and forth in the mouth between the ironic tastebuds and the sincere ones.
One of the main criticisms of globalization is that it is an ultimately homogenizing force. We
hear this all too frequently in commonplaces about Starbucks or McDonald's, "Starbucks is
taking over the world," or "Meet me at the 7th Starbucks on the left." Yes, it's true, every city
has more Starbucks and McDonald's than anyone would possibly wish to count. There is, of
course, the guilt associated with going to Starbucks and ordering a cappuccino. But are we
always unwitting participants in the process of globalization? Should we feel guilty more than
we already do? The epiphany that you are frequenting a chain and not a unique store is
definitely one of the products of globalization.
As citizens of the postmodern world we must look both ironically and sincerely at "that
surprised chain feeling". We must see the experience both as the horrible homogenized
product of globalization and as that which allows us to see that we are never authentic, that
we are never unique, but eloquent constructions of chosen language.