Minor Transnationalism

Description

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 Contents Introduction: Thinking through the Minor, Transnationally by Francoise Lionnet and Shu-Mei Shih 1. Theorizing Inclusions: Psychoanalysis, Transnationalism, and Minority Cultures by Suzanne Gearhart Rational and Irrational Choices: Form, Affect, and Ethics by David Palumbo-Liu Toward an Ethics of Transnational Encounters, or, "When" Does a "Chinese" Woman Become a "Feminist"? by Shu-Mei Shih The Postmodern Subaltern: Globalization Theory and the Subject of Ethnic, Area, and Postcolonial Studies by Susan Koshy II. Historicizing Murder in Montmartre: Race, Sex, and Crim in Jazz Age Paris by Tyler Stovall Giving "Minor" Pasts a Future: Narrating History in Transnational Cinematic Autobiography by Kathleen McHugh Major and Minor Discourses of the Vernacular: Discrepant African Histories by Moradewun Adejunmobi III. Reading, Writing, Performing Transcolonial Translations: Shakespeare in Mauritius by Francoise Lionnet Postcolonial Theory and the Predicament of "Minor Literature" by Ali Behdad The Calm Beauty of Japan at Almost the Speed of Sound: Sakamoto Kyu and the Translations of Rockability by Michael K. Bourdaghs IV. Spatializing Cartographies of Globalization, Technologies of Gendered Subjectivities: The Dub Poetry of Jean "Binta" Breeze by Jenny Sharpe The Double Logic of Minor Spaces by Seiji M. Lippit National Space at Minor Space: Afro-Brazilian Culture and the Pelourinho by Elizabeth A. Marchant Alternate Geographies and the Melancholy of Mestizaje by Rafael Perez-Torres Contributors Index