Minor Transnationalism

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, Fran oise Lionnet, Seiji M. Lippit, Elizabeth Marchant, Kathleen McHugh, David Palumbo-Liu, Rafael P rez-Torres, Jenny Sharpe, Shu-mei Shih, Tyler Stovall

Author: Françoise Lionnet
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 03/09/2005
Pages: 368
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.05lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.62w x 0.85d
ISBN: 9780822334903

About the Author

Françoise Lionnet is Chair of French and Francophone Studies and Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the author of Postcolonial Representations: Women, Literature, Identity.

Shu-mei Shih is Associate Professor of Asian Languages and Cultures, Comparative Literature, and Asian American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the author of The Lure of the Modern: Writing Modernism in Semicolonial China, 1917-1937.