Globalization, Transnation and Utopia

Abstract

The impact of post-colonial theory on globalization discourse has been clear for some time now. The ‘cultural turn’ of globalization studies in the nineties was due almost entirely to the impact of post-colonial analysis. This paper will propose a way of extending this analysis of global culture in a phenomenon I refer to as ‘the transnation.’ The transnation is not an object in space but a way of addressing the mobility, contingency and variable cultural positions of subjects in an increasingly globalized world. ‘The’ transnation represents a state of inbetweenness not adequately accounted for by the terms ‘diaspora’ ‘migrancy’ or ‘multiculturalism’ but which disrupts the discourse of loss attending those terms. The transnation thus becomes a post-colonial intervention into the debates circulating around the questions of cultural identity, diaspora, language and literature in a global future.