Imaginary states : studies in cultural transnationalism

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Title:

Imaginary states : studies in cultural transnationalism

Author:

Hitchcock, Peter.

ISBN:

9780252023934

Personal Author:

Hitchcock, Peter.

Publication Information:

Urbana : University of Illinois, 2003.

Physical Description:

x, 243 p.; 24 cm.

Series:

Transnational cultural studies.

Series Title:

Transnational cultural studies.

Contents:

Introduction: Imaginary States -- The Agon of the Archipelago: Three Forms of Crossing and Caribbeanness -- 1. Glissant and Opaque Space -- 2. Brathwaite, Crossing, Voicing -- 3. Conde, Crossing, Errantry of Place -- 4. The White of Algeria; or, The Paroxysms of the Postcolony -- 5. Chronotope of the Shoe (Two) -- 6. Joe: The Architectonic of a Commodity -- Conclusion: Culture and Globalization.

Subject Term:

Culture.

Globalization.

Intercultural communication.

Copies:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Item Barcode	Shelf Number	Copy	Status
Searching... 1:IIEMSA	1:GEN-BOOK	33168023661552	306 H674.I 2003	1	Searching... Unknown
Searching... 1:IIEMSA	1:GEN-BOOK	33168023670744	306 H674.I 2003	2	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

Can transnationalism be separated from capitalist globalization? Can an artist create cultural space and rethink the nation state simultaneously? In Imaginary States , Peter Hitchcock explores such questions to invigorate the analysis of cultural transnationalism.

Juxtaposing the macroeconomic realities of commodities with the creation of cultural workers, Hitchcock offers case studies of Nike and the coffee industry alongside examinations of writings by the Algerian feminist Assia Djebar and the Caribbean writers Edward Glissant, Kamau Brathwaite, and Maryse Conde. The stark contrast of literary examples of cultural transnationalism with discussions of commodity circulation attempts to complicate the relationship between the aesthetic and the economic.

Blocking our imagination, Hitchcock argues, is the desire to produce cultural diversity under the terms of a global economy. In believing that to have one we must pursue the other, we flatten difference, erase complexity, and fail to grasp the imaginaries at stake.

Hitchcock's invocation of the imagination allows for a deeper understanding of transnational "states"--whether states of being, economic states, or nation states. Proffering that the crisis of globalization is a crisis of the imagination, he urges that cultural transnationalism not be feared or suppressed but approached as a way to imagine difference globally.