Going into this course, I must admit I had relatively little idea as to what we would actually be discussing. Transnationalism is a concept that I had certainly heard of before, and some of the theoretical and literary texts are works that I had previously encountered, but that prior knowledge didn’t really hint at what we would cover. One profound difference between my preconceived notions of a transnational seminar and what was actually encountered lies in the idea of the nation. I had assumed, at the beginning of the semester, that much of this class would deal with the nation and ideas of nationalism. I believe, in some ways, early readings, for example from Appadurai or Jay, served to reinforce this idea. And while nations as agents and the idea of nationalism certainly figured into the course, what would eventually be most interesting to me was largely independent from, and much smaller than, the nation. To me, the most profound aspect of this course has been the human dimension. The lived experiences of individuals whose lives have been impacted by transnational phenomena really serve to highlight what is personally the most important aspect of transnational study. Because it seeks to examine phenomena that spread widely, quickly and across borders, transnationalism is something that affects the daily lives of a vast array of people. The idea of the personal narrative is thus one that is profoundly impacted by the study of transnationalism.
In the readings for this class, I found examples of the transnational impact on personal narrative in both fictional and non-fictional works. Though the work straddles the line between those two classifications, as it does with so many other ways of classification, Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera presents a very personal account of how a personal narrative can be affected. Her story of growing up in an area caught between a nebulous, vague border that is defined differently in terms of spatiality, temporality and culture shows how limiting the idea of the nation can be when dealing with individual lives. One particularly interesting anecdote found in the book describes Anzaldúa’s encounter with the mythical figure Coatlicue. Coatlicue, a goddess culturally indigenous to Anzaldúa’s people, is a mythical representation of duality. This figure, reflective of the fragmented identity that the author presents in the text, is nonetheless “encountered” in a very unexpected way. She describes an encounter with a representation of the goddess: “I first saw the statue of this life-in-death and death-in-life, headless ‘monster’ goddess (as the Village Voice dubbed her) at the Museum of Natural History in New York City (69).” Anzaldúa’s encounter with a physical manifestation of Coatlicue occurs hundreds of miles from the context in which she first learned of the figure, in a city that is radically different from her Borderland. This anecdote made me consider the ways in which our lived experiences, influenced by so many factors, impacts how we perceive and engage with the world around us. In Anzaldúa’s personal story, Coatlicue represents a “monster goddess.” Would Anzaldúa agree with this evaluation? Whose interpretation of Coatlicue is “right,” if any? These are all things, I believe, that are dependent on personal narrative.
The difference context can make in perceiving the world is also reinforced in other fictionalized presentations of personal narratives. In Persepolis, Marji appropriates cultural items from disparate sources, from east and west during the height of the cold war, and uses them to craft her identity. American rock music is mixed with Marxist philosophy and take on a new contextual significance in the midst of the Iranian revolution. This process is seen in several works examined this semester. Cole’s Open City presents an African born man, living in New York City, traveling to Belgium and having deep philosophical discussions with Muslim immigrants running an Internet café, a figurative and literal access point to the rest of the world. The amount of lived experiences, national and transnational phenomena converging during these moments of philosophizing is unimaginable, but it’s presented as a rather quotidian event.
Examples like Persepolis and Open City really serve to illustrate to me how imperceptibly slight but massively impactful transnational influences are in personal histories. Encounters between people bring together so many different elements, which could be coming from so many different sources, and puts them into contact that could lead to so many new permutations. In my own area of interest, I believe it will be helpful to consider these personal aspects for the artists and works that I examine. Though the spread of transnational phenomena was not as easy in the nineteenth-century, the lives of the artists that interest me are certainly not limited by national contexts. The works of Debussy are impacted by the poetry of Baudelaire, who was influenced by the music of Wagner, who developed a new style to stand in contrast to Italian operas. The personal narratives of people are impacted by an unimaginably large number of influences, which come through, between and around borders.
I’ve also been thinking a lot about the ways in which a global, non-Western novel or memoir might be considered a transnational narrative. Although Paul Jay discusses how globalization should not merely be understood as a new phenomenon, I still find it helpful to think of transnational literature as something produced in a post-1980s environment. Perhaps this is because I have been thinking of transnational literature alongside postcolonial literature.
Although one could say that people in Africa and the Caribbean are still producing postcolonial literature focused on the present moment in time, I think one could make an argument that there has been a shift in global literature–in the 1960s and 1970s, a lot of celebrated postcolonial novels by writers like Chinua Achebe focused on narratives of people situated within a single national setting, often with an outsider coming to interact with them. However, more recently, a lot of the works that would otherwise be called postcolonial novels are more focused on hybridized identities that emerge along with individual migration. If we continue to call these stories postcolonial, then I think we would focus more on how the narratives relate to the nation. But, if we think of them as transnational, we might think of how the themes of of these narratives transcend the nation and reach for larger issues that arise with immigration and displacement.
In some ways, I think transnationalism is still largely undefined. Even though some transnational scholars may attempt to minimize or eschew the nation, it is evident from what we have read this semester that the authors and critics still engage with the nation to some extent. In my further research, I hope to think more about how the categories of postcolonial, national, transnational, international, and global complement and oppose one another in different ways.