Minor Transnationalism - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822334909 ISBN 13: 9780822334903

Publisher: Duke University Press Books, 2005

Synopsis

Minor Transnationalism moves beyond a binary model of minority cultural formations that often dominates contemporary cultural and postcolonial studies. Where that model presupposes that minorities necessarily and continuously engage with and against majority cultures in a vertical relationship of assimilation and opposition, this volume brings together case studies that reveal a much more varied terrain of minority interactions with both majority cultures and other minorities. The contributors recognize the persistence of colonial power relations and the power of global capital, attend to the inherent complexity of minor expressive cultures, and engage with multiple linguistic formations as they bring postcolonial minor cultural formations across national boundaries into productive comparison.

Based in a broad range of fields—including literature, history, African studies, Asian American studies, Asian studies, French and francophone studies, and Latin American studies—the contributors complicate ideas of minority cultural formations and challenge the notion that transnationalism is necessarily a homogenizing force. They cover topics as diverse as competing versions of Chinese womanhood; American rockabilly music in Japan; the trope of mestizaje in Chicano art and culture; dub poetry radio broadcasts in Jamaica; creole theater in Mauritius; and race relations in Salvador, Brazil. Together, they point toward a new theoretical vocabulary, one capacious enough to capture the almost infinitely complex experiences of minority groups and positions in a transnational world.

Contributors. Moradewun Adejunmobi, Ali Behdad, Michael Bourdaghs, Suzanne Gearhart, Susan Koshy, Françoise Lionnet, Seiji M. Lippit, Elizabeth Marchant, Kathleen McHugh, David Palumbo-Liu, Rafael Pérez-Torres, Jenny Sharpe, Shu-mei Shih , Tyler Stovall

About this title

From the Back Cover:

"Minor Transnationalism" opens up new approaches to reading minority cultures and major/minor dynamics of capitalist globalization and postcolonial emergence from Paris and Los Angeles to Japan, Jamaica, Nigeria, and Brazil. It wrests the 'transnational' away from tired paradigms of global capitalism or ethnic cooptation and makes it do the work of 'minority-becoming.' The result is a fabulous collection of cultural plenitude, globalized imagination, and critical lucidity."--Rob Wilson, author of "Reimagining the American Pacific: From "South Pacific" to Bamboo Ridge and Beyond"

About the Author:

Françoise Lionnet is Professor of Comparative Literature, French and Francophone Studies, and Women's Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the author of Postcolonial Representations: Women, Literature, Identity.
Shu-mei Shih is Professor of Comparative Literature, Asian Languages and Cultures, and Asian American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the author of Visuality and Identity: Sinophone Articulations across the Pacific.

About this edition

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0822334909
• ISBN 13: 9780822334903
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368
• Editor: Shu-mei Shih, Francoise Lionnet