Appudurai uses the example of Philippine mimicry of American culture to talk about the global culture of the hyper-real. He himself recognizes the strong ties to Baudrillard of 'a social imaginaire largely built around reruns.' What may be prompting this trend in thinking? Why have theorists picked up this irony of 'nostalgia for the present' in the politics of global cultural flows? Baudrillard talked about unmoored copies without an origin, I think you can also hear some dialogues happening between this and some other theorists, Derrida's decentering of the origin, Judith Butler's argument that origins are themselves copies. Why do theories converge like this? Is it a matter of popularity, theories feeding off each other, or is it something about the specific cultural moment we're in that makes alternative explantions unthinkable or inappropriate? Why does this idea of fantastical substitutes make so much sense to theorists right now?