The set of scapes proposed by Appadurai in Modernity at large to describe the flow of culture is an idea with which I was previously unfamiliar. This idea might not have changed my thinking about the world completely, but it has certainly predisposed and led me to think about my surroundings trying to discern the scapes present in my everyday life. 

Last week I was standing in the “Spanish food” isle in the supermarket and, after seeing the variety of products available in a neighborhood with an almost non-existent hispanic population, I thought about the many products that have made their way into the common diet of the average american. As I walked back home, I realized that the flow of culture that is evident by the availability of food products originally from other countries is also manifest in the diversity of restaurants found in the shopping center. Athough it is a small shopping center, there is an Italian restaurant, a Chinese restaurant, a sushi place and a Chipotle. The only “American” establishment available is a Dunkin’ Donuts. Halfway home I entered a liquor store to buy a bottle of wine for dinner. Since the wine is not divided by type, but by its origin, the most notable feature in the liquor store are the signs and flags (Argentina, Chile, Spain, France, Italy, Australia, and California). This foodscape is an effective example of culture flow. In addition, it can be related to Paul Jay’s conception that culture travels with commodities. 

I’m starting to think that I see transnational processes everywhere. It is something similar to buying a car and then noticing how everyone seems to own the same model. That same day after dinner, Melissa and I watched a clip from John Oliver’s Las Week Tonight about gay rights in Uganda. Anti-gay laws in Uganda were introduced during the British colonization of the country. Nonetheless, their enforcement was strengthened after a group of American evangelicals came to Uganda speaking against homosexuality. Fortunately, the laws were revoked some time afterwards because they were approved without a quorum. This is reminiscent of the ethnoscapes put forward by Appadurai, which refers to the moving of individuals from one place to another. As this example shows, ideas, and therefore culture, travels with them. 

Furthermore, last Thursday I was reading the online edition of El País and came across an article about the attempt by some retailers to popularize the Black Friday model in Spain. The first retailers that tried to attract shoppers with such a model have their headquarters in the United States. However, there are also Spanish retailers participating. Spain is not the only country that has imported this shopping event. In Mexico a similar event, known as El buen fin (The good weekend), has been taking place since 2011. The event lasts four days and was promoted by business associations and the federal government. Appadurai explains that financescapes have their own constraints and incentives. This is the logic working on the particular implementation of the Black Friday model in Spain and Mexico. 

As you can see, the idea of culture flows and transnationalism in general is persistent on the back of my head in my everyday life. For this reason there are great possibilities that in the future I will approach literature and other media from this perspective. I have no doubts that in the future I will be trying to publish an article or participating in a conference about transnationalism in contemporary Latin American literature.

Transnationalism as an analytical frame supports both universalizing and particularizing visions of feminism.

As a transnational process feminism possesses a global constitution and at the same time it is composed and influenced by the particularities that characterize feminism in different regions of the globe. By analyzing feminism from a transnational approach it is presupposed that the struggle for equality is happening at a global scale and that it is a process determined by the interrelatedness between feminist movements from different parts of the world. Feminist movements benefit from both visions. The universalizing vision creates more opportunities for NGOs and international organizations, such as the UN, to pay attention to feminist movement’s concerns and demands, which can lead to financial support and policy changes that procure equality.

A particularizing vision of feminism, on the other hand, favors the perception of peculiarities in feminist movements around the world and how they influence each other. In addition a particularizing vision acknowledges that feminist movements are determined by varying factors, such as religion, policial and economic systems, depending on where they originate. Likewise this vision ratifies variations in feminist movements. The primary focus of some feminist organizations shifts according to the relevance of certain issues. For example, female circumcision in Africa or feminicide in Guatemala and Mexico, may not be the central concern in the agenda of a feminist group in Argentina. In the same way, video game feminism might not be the center of attention of a feminist movement from a country under an extreme religious regime.

Aili Mari Tripp provides particularizing and universalizing visions of feminism that are similar to what I have exposed above. Tripp states that the feminist movement’s influence and agenda have been multidirectional and that there are remaining issues around the world. Thus, feminism is still a universal matter. Indeed, after one and a half centuries of feminist movement’s efforts, inequality issues have not been resolved. Furthermore, misconceptions, misunderstanding, and plain ignorance plague the public’s general knowledge about feminism (social networks and Internet memes are a good example of this). A few weeks ago, Mariluz included in her post a speech given by Emma Watson at a HeForShe event in New York City, in which she called for men involvement and participation in obtaining equality for men and women. In addition, Watson reminds us  that women rights activism is not equivalent to a man-hating movement, rather a movement that seeks mutual understanding, which is achieved through communication.

In response to Watson’s speech, Andrea Peyser, a columnist from the New York Post accused Watson of asking for equal rights, but avoiding equal responsibility among men and women. Peyser considers that there is no inequality in the industrialized world and that the notion of women being victims of the patriarchy is rubbish. This is a clear example of the complacent attitudes that Tripp mentions in her article. Additionally, Peyser’s remarks constitute irrevocable proof that a particularizing view of feminism is essential, since she suggests that after achieving equality in the industrialized world, the matter is resolved and there is no need of speeches, such as Watson’s. Moreover, a particularizing view of feminism keeps us from generalizing women’s situation in industrialized nations. Women in these countries have different unresolved matters, which Peyser fails to notice. For example, in today’s elections there are proposals restricting a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy. According to Grewald and Kaplan, transnationalism is an approach that allows getting to the specifics. They refer to sexualities in postmodernity, nonetheless, as we have seen, the same can be said about feminism. Grewald and Kaplan call for an interdisciplinary approach to understand a global phenomenon. This approach, I think, would enable the study of specific groups. In this sense transnationalism supports universalizing and particularizing visions of feminism, since they complement each other.

The reader’s perception of transnational elements in Persepolis results from its configuration as a graphic novel. Marjane Satrapi, an Iranian-French author, writing a graphic novel in France to relate her childhood in Iran is in itself a product of transnationalism. Persepolis is divided in sections (The Veil, The Bicycle, The Water Cell, etc.), which display a layout that consists of a series of scenes separated by white spaces, contiguous, but still separated. The apparent fragmented structure is unified by Marjane’s objective to show that Iran is more than fanaticism, fundamentalism, and terrorism. In the introduction of Persepolis Marjane explicitly presents this as her motivation to write the novel. In this sense, the components of the graphic novel interact to form a single unity. It is a process analogous to that of transnationalism, which is determined by the interaction of components of culture originated by a diverse range of factors and motivations. After reading Satrapi’s graphic novel, we are able to interpret and assign a meaning to it. Likewise, the flow of culture that results from transnationalism is interpreted and adopted by its recipients.

For me, the genre has had a transnational impact, since it fostered the willingness to try and accept cultural products from other countries. When I was in middle school manga from Japan was very popular among the male student body. This was in Mexico in the late ‘90s. Some of the most popular were manga that we consumed in the form of anime, which aired on television. Nonetheless, everyone was trying to get the latest volumes of the manga to find out what would happen next and be ahead of the anime that showed in TV. There was a complete network of economic transactions (trading, buying, selling) related to these comics carried out by students. The manga were obtained in flea markets and other irregular shops in a bigger city about 20 miles from ours and then were distributed at school. Sometimes the translation from the Japanese was terrible and we had to figure out the plot of the manga by looking at the pictures. In addition, the effort, performed by some translators, to westernize the reading direction created more problems than it solved. Nonetheless, we enjoyed them and learned from them too. I learned most of Greek mythology from reading Saint Seiya. Coincidentally, Marjane learns about philosophy from a comic book.  

As I stated above, my interest in manga led to an openness to accept cultural manifestations from other parts of the world.  During my third year of middle school (middle school is three years in Mexico) my interests began to shift towards music. We were still engaged with manga at school, but now music was our main focus. It followed the same pattern of distribution as manga. This flow of culture through music is similar as Marjane’s experience portrayed in Persepolis. Radio stations, or at least the radio stations my friends and I listened, played mainly rock from the United States and Britain (Regional or norteño music was not as popular among teens as it is now. It became more popular in most age-groups after immigrants returning to Mexico brought along this genre of music, which was popular in some regions of the country, but was even more popular in Mexican communities in the United States). In our quest to find music from other parts of the world, we began to listen to nordic metal. We were listening to bands such as Nightwish (they are coming to Silver Spring in May, by the way) or Tristania. Sigur Rós was not metal, but was perceived as the new Radiohead (I’m not sure how we reached such comparison) and people were eager to get their hands on their music. In contrast to Marjane, I could get the music without major problems and/or consequences. Although, now that I think about it, we did depend on products from abroad to listen to music in the form of electronics bought in the United States. It was common to have products from the United States at home. My family has lived in both countries for several generations so we were always surrounded by products manufactured here.

The process that I have described is analogous to Marjane’s experience. She was surrounded by fragments of culture from abroad.

     In Global Matters, Paul Jay writes, “The process we call globalization is characterized by the conflation of cultural and economic forms” (34). By establishing this relationship, Jay designates globalization as a complex process, determined by both economic and cultural factors. Jay cites Stiglitz to introduce economic globalization as, “…the complex product of dramatically increased and unregulated economic exchanges across national borders and the creation of institutional structures to manage and equalize those exchanges” (54). On the other hand, Jay presents literary narrative, cinema, television, and live performances as cultural forms and goes on to assert that these, “…are commodities”(55). In this sense, culture flows through the consumption of products related to these areas: books, movies, TV shows, and music. The aforementioned theorist presents this argument as a response to those who tried to explain globalization exclusively from a materialistic or a cultural approach, saying that, “…these forms of exchange have always overlapped” (56). Jay’s argument portrays the complexity and interdependence of cultural and economic processes. Furthermore, we are predisposed to accept this reasoning due to the fact that it is unlikely for a single factor to determine a transnational process in the complex world in which we live. Nevertheless, we ought to ask if cultural forms are reduced to literary narratives, cinema, television, and live performances. What constitutes a cultural form? Is the flow of culture confined to these expressions? And if they are, do they portray culture accurately? Is the culture being portrayed idealized, contaminated or is it a reliable portrayal?

     Additionally, Paul Jay’s linkage of economic and cultural forms is based on Appadurai’s theory of global flows and the role of the imagination in the configuration of imagined selves and worlds (35). Jay uses the “scapes” proposed by Appadurai (ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes, and ideoscapes) to prove that there is a connection between economic and cultural forms. He states that for Appadurai they are “a complex set of global flows that have set loose contexts for the imaginative reformation of subjectivity across the borders of nation-states” (35). By portraying these flows as a set, Jay validates their interrelation. Even if we accept that these global flows are related, there is no impediment for us to question Appadurai’s assertion of the importance of imagination in the formation of subjectivity. Is the imagination paramount in our acceptance, imitation and appropriation of what we see in movies, read in books and listen in music? Is this in fact how culture flows? And ultimately, are these expression the only medium through which culture flows? 

     Paul Jay’s exegesis is very appealing. It incorporates different points of view, interpretations and explanations about cultural interactions. Nonetheless, there is an implicit assumption that culture only flows through mercantile operations of cultural products.