This semester, I truly appreciated being able to look at a variety of texts through a transnational lens. My understanding of the term itself has changed tremendously from our first discussion to now. While I still believe that the task of distinguishing cosmopolitanism, nationalism, transnationalism, and the global that we attempted in our first discussion will never be less challenging, the understanding of crucial distinctions I have gained do make this task appear much less grueling. Especially interesting were the differences and parallels that were drawn between transnationalism and globalization, as even our literature discussed that there is a fine line and a multitude of differing opinions on defining this distinction. I now understand that this fine line is drawn by the transnational attempt at working ‘beyond’ distinct borders of the nation state, something that is often crucial in discussing globalization. The works we read, including Spanish, German, and English texts, were a transnational combination in and of themselves, while highlighting how these processes occur and interact to create a new forms of meaning.

One of the main texts that has changed the way in how I approach literature from a transnational standpoint is Homi Bhabha’s article on the concept of the ‘third space’, ‘liminal space’ or ‘interstitiality’. While his jargon was quite complex and difficult at times, this idea seems to have struck a chord in my understanding of transnational processes, especially in regards to the creation of meaning and identity. Having previously been exposed to mostly post-colonial theory and criticism, this new notion posits an entirely new way of examining and understanding literature. I no longer consider texts solely in regards to oppression or privilege, though this still may often be the case even in this age. Instead, I am now able to grasp and appreciate that the occurring contact in itself is an exchange. More specifically, I now see this border where opposing cultures, ideas, and forms collide as creating a productive exchange. The liminal or third space in which this occurs is not bound by previous conceptions or schools of thought, but rather creates a space where novel imaginations, identities, and belonging can thrive.

This interstitiality can indeed be applied to every text we have discussed this semester, but I will name just a few here. In Open City, Julius’ past experiences and daily motions contest in this liminal space, giving new meaning to his identity which cannot be placed within the confines of his ancestry, travel, or current location. He narrates his thoughts while engaging in discussions that often transgress beyond ideas of the past, present, and future. In Borderlands, Anzaldua uses language as a means to navigate this third space between her English and Hispanic language. This productive exchange results in a new hybrid language which is an authentic representation of her lived experiences. In Axolotl Roadkill, Mifti is trapped in a space between reality and imagination. She attempts to make sense of her own belonging by interweaving her current situation with an often hallucinatory, but authentic narrative. While all of these texts are products of different languages and cultures, they share the central concept of working outside fixed borders to create new meaning.

Lastly, I believe the exposure and introduction to the digital humanities is something that will shape the way that I approach my academic work. With an undergraduate degree in Communication/German, I had been searching for ways to merge the two fields of my interest and knowledge. That being said, I immediately felt drawn to the ability of combining these two fields. Digital humanities is an emerging field that draws on the ever-increasing prevalence of technology in our lives. It is only natural that we should be discussing and researching the ways in which this affects the collective imagination of people and nations. The ability to draw on large data sets undoubtedly combines well with the humanities, especially in regards to collating large amounts of research. While the tools are fascinating, just a quick glance shows that actually being able to use these tools successful may require much more practice and research.

Overall, I am grateful for having had the ability to enroll in this course. This course would be beneficial for students in any discipline, even outside of the school of languages, as it opens up an entirely new way of thinking about the world and its exchanges of cultural forms, and will undoubtedly shape the way in which I approach my academic work in the future.

In Modernity at Large, Arjun Appadurai argues that globalization is a contemporary phenomenon, a rupture from the past and what he calls a «Global Now» enhanced –in part– by recent technological innovations, the eruption of electronic media and what he defines as «new sources and disciplines for the construction of imagined selves and imagined worlds» (3). But can this definition be so totalizing as to impede other theorists to dig back in time and realize that globalization is not an extant episode in history?

This seems to be Paul Jay’s argument. In Global Matters: The Transnational Turn in Literary Studies, the English professor advocates for a revision of history and the phenomenon of globalization, and confronts Appadurai’s take on it with other scholars such as Roland Robertson which, in Paul Jay’s words, argues that globalization «predates modernity and has been evolving since at least the fifteenth century» (36). And so he provides the five phases of globalization according to Robertson which consists of the following: «germinal» (1400 – 1750), «incipient» (1750 – 1875), «take-off» (1875 – 1925), «struggle for hegemony» (1925 – 69) and «uncertainty» which, according to Robertson «runs from 1969 to the present» (36).

With this is mind, let us go back to the year 1492, the year in which Spain consolidated itself as the new powerhouse with the discovery of the New Continent and becomes the first global empire in the history of human kind (it gained for itself colonies in all five continents), making Spanish the lingua franca, which eventually would be spoken by one hundred million people.

If globalization is defined as the back and forth of goods and ideas, then we can agree with Robertson and Paul Jay and even argue that the first world encounter with globalization, or the «germinal» stage, takes place when Spain connects the world by means of language and the opening of new routes for the traveling of products such as the cocoa bean, a native seed of Mesoamerica and parts of South America, unknown until then in Europe, and coffee reaches the New Continent from Arabia via Spain.

Literature also had its share in it. Spanish literature begins to be translated in an unprecedented way and we find iconic novels translated almost immediately to other European language such as Amadís de Gaula and La Celestina. But the literary piece that would be most benefited by this germinal stage of globalization would be Cervantes’ Don Quixote, written in 1605 and translated into English by Thomas Shelton in 1612, into French in 1614 by César Oudin, into Italian in 1622 by Lorenzo Franciosini and into German in 1648 by Pasch Basteln.

Prompted to reflect on how the idea of globalization being not a recent phenomenon but one that has been going on since what scholars now call the Early Modern Period, it’s impossible not to see literature, specially literature from the Golden Ages, that is, Spanish literature from the 16^th and 17^th century with different eyes. In those centuries, Spanish letters traveled in an unheard-of velocity and the transnational view helps observe this uniqueness with ample theoretical tools.

Even more: The «take-off» stage, which coincides with the Industrial Revolution, can be seen as the other global moment of Spanish Literature, this time coming from Latin America but greatly influenced by French poetry. Spanish Modernism will not only have a great impact in the now independent colonies but also in Spain in writers such as Ramón del Valle-Inclán and Juan Ramón Jiménez. Here we see a triangular communication between France, Latin America and Spain that best describes that traveling of ideas that transnational theorist insist as being a trademark of globalization.

As a student of Spanish Medieval and Golden Age literature it has been revealing to be able to pin down the global phenomena implied in the diffusion and expansion of the Spanish language and its literature through the transnational and global lens. Such tools can help make conjectures as to why such peculiarities took place in two eras that are often seen as distant, unconnected and uncommunicated with the rest of the world. But as Paul Jay sustains, «it is a mistake to approach globalization itself as a contemporary phenomenon and that it makes much more sense to take a historical view in which globalization is dated as beginning in at least the sixteenth century and covering a time span that includes the long histories of imperialism, colonization, decolonization, and postcolonialism». (3).

As a half-Caucasian, half-Pakistani individual adopted by white, American parents as an infant and lacking any knowledge of or connection to my biological parents or their cultural backgrounds, I often feel as though I am on the outside looking in on experiences of heritage. Certainly, my personal heritage is a product of the context in which I was raised, but I lack a sense of connection to any kind of ancestral meaning, and notions of heritage that precedes one’s birth having an impact on selfhood often seem constructed or otherwise inaccessible to me. For this reason, Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera was particularly meaningful among the texts that I read over the course of the semester. I had not read the book before, and while I was familiar with the idea of conflict at the Mexico-United States border, Anzaldúa illustrated for me the equally contested borders within people based on complex racial backgrounds, histories, and languages. It was strange to me, at first, to read how relevant Anzaldúa believed her Indian, Aztec, and Spanish heritages were to her. In Borderlands/La Frontera, she writes about those groups’ histories as if the people are warring inside of her. I struggled to grasp how her understanding of ancestry could mean so much, how the actions of the people she was genetically descended from could matter in her life in the present.

I still don’t think I completely understand how the connections of ancestry can bear such powerful importance in people’s lives. Perhaps it’s simply because I do not have access to that information for myself. I cannot say with any certainty who or even which groups of people I am descended from. But when people imagine their ancestry and attach meaning to it, it seems to me that they’re often working with guesswork to an extent as well. No family line is certain, and imagining that the experiences of people you have nothing more than a biological connection to are relevant to your own life seems nonsensical to me. Anzaldúa’s narration of how her past, and her ancestors’ pasts, influenced the conditions in which she grew up and the attitudes of her people, however, helped me begin to realize how the past informs the present in the context of a cultural group. Those biological ties to the past may not have direct influence on personal identity, but their cultural value and reinforcement do.

I think reading Borderlands/La Frontera has helped me be more cognizant of the complex connection between heritage and identity in other works that I read and analyze, as well as in my personal encounters with others. I will now consider the intricacies of separate, conflicting ancestral lines and the histories that inform the development of a culture to a particular moment, and I hope that my understanding of how authors represent their nations, cultures, and languages will be informed by Anzaldúa’s unmasking of the concept of unified culture. Using Anzaldúa’s vision, I will be more confident about critically assessing the concept of heritage, whereas in the past I have shied away from such an approach because the discussion of ancestry feels like territory I am not authorized to occupy.

On a personal level, I also feel that Borderlands/La Frontera has been constructive for me in that it has complicated and deepened my understanding of what it means to identify as Mexican or Chicano. I am not, to my knowledge, connected to a Latino background, but Spanish speakers often mistakenly identify me as Latino. There is something confusing and painful about being associated with a particular group identity when I can’t actually participate in that experience. Reading Anzaldúa’s text, however, has helped me see the difficulty and often painful contradictions of reconciling self, culture, and race that exist even for those who have clear cultural and ethnic associations. As a result, I find myself feeling a sense of fellowship with those diverse cultures that reach out but don’t quite connect with me, because Borderlands/La Frontera has inspired me to wonder whether the experience of being outside of stable racial identity is not something that separates me from others, but a struggle many of us share. Anzaldúa certainly makes a strong case for the prevalence of conflict within single racial and cultural groups, and throughout the semester we have learned just how significantly people all over the world experience rupture in the national, cultural, and ethnic categories that shape identity. Even the most stable narratives of identity are never simple, and never produced without the triumph of some voices and the repression of others. This recognition will contribute to the way I think about myself as well as others, both academically and personally.

Having spent a significant portion of my life in airports, I have often felt that the experience is an interesting in-between, a limbo of sorts. While I’m accustomed and almost comfortable with some airports more than others, my familiarity with the building or the look of the check-in counters, security lines, waiting areas, customs, and baggage claim areas does not take much away from that feeling of being somewhere and nowhere at the same time; in-between here and there. I’ve slept on airport floors and benches; I once awoke to a homeless man’s bare feet next to my face on my backpack that I was using as a pillow. I was stranded in Heathrow for days after all flights were cancelled due to a fire. I’ve wandered into the strange last-stop souvenir shops and bought things from the duty-free zones. I’ve talked to strangers, and ran into friends. I’ve had my bags searched, and lost bags as well. I’ve been dropped off and picked up. I’ve had to find my way to and from the airport in countries whose languages I did not speak. I’ve even gone to the wrong airport, only to find that out once I arrived. (Why does Brussels have so many airports?). I always tend to be in airports at my most tired, packing until an hour before my 5am flight or feeling the residual effects of Dramamine after a 10-hour bus ride. Maybe it has something to do with that tension between feeling the lack of control and the conceding of all personal privacy and rights while at the same time the (forced) “go with the flow,” state of mind, almost freedom. Maybe it’s the semi-altered state I always find myself in while inside airports, (or maybe it’s the airport that causes the semi-altered state), but I could never put my finger on what made the experiences of these (non-)places so distinct.

I must say that while many of the concepts and texts we read this semester have sparked my interest and made me think through a different (transnational) perspective or lens, the idea of the non-space has affected me the most. If Augè is right in his hypothesis that these non-places are the product of supermodernity, an opinion towards which I tend to lean, then these (non-)places are a relatively new concept. We have read much about globalization and its ties to transnationalism, and it seems to me that with the increased global flows and exchange only amplified with technological advances, these non-places are a logical product. When traveling long distances with such frequency was not so common, people tended to stay within more isolated communities, places as defined by Augè as “relational, historical, and concerned with identity.” Before the standardization of time that came with the advent of railroads, the existence of such non-places had to have been inconceivable. The notion of the non-place, and the subsequent overlapping and blurred relationship between place and non-place that Augè describes, is one of many concepts that has helped me to make sense of ambiguities that I have encountered in my life experiences, as well as ones that I foresee helping to shape my academic processes and practices in the future.

While the concept of the non-place is of significance to me due to my previous exposure and interest in other theories involving space and place, currently I am working on a paper involving the photographic work of the Puerto Rican artist/writer Eduardo Lalo and reading different image theories. The idea of the non-space has affected my thinking about photography. When Augè writes, “Everything proceeds as if space had been trapped by time, as if there were no history other than the last forty-eight hours of news, as if each individual history were drawing its motives, its words and images, from the inexhaustible stock of an unending history in the present,” I see a correlation between the photograph and the non-place in the possibility of a unique potential of photography to capture a specific aspect of the non-place (84).

I am also interested in the traveler and/or the tourist as subjects involved in complex processes, and since Augè proposes the traveler’s space as the “archetype of non-place,” I wonder how the space/place of the “native” can be articulated, especially in relation to the traveler. While all of these ideas are circulating, however, I always bear in mind that “Place and non-space are rather like opposed polarities: the first is never completely erased, the second never totally completed; they are like palimpsests on which the scrambled game of identity and relations is ceaselessly rewritten,” (my personal favorite quote of the reading) (64).

To conclude, this course’s narrow (yet simultaneously very broad) theme of transnationalism has been a very interesting and useful theoretical tool in my academic studies. I have long questioned the validity of national and other socially, politically, and culturally constructed borders, and thinking about different transnational frameworks and aesthetics has been and will continue to be very productive in my field of interest. I believe it’s an important context that should be considered in most every field, at least as a point of comparison or contrast, due to the increasingly (with no end in sight) globalized world that is the present.

The transnational film unit in our course prompted me to think about the ways in which foreign film industries, products, and consumers are not only multinational, but also transnational. As a student of literary and cultural studies, I feel that our course readings, especially the introduction to Transnational Cinema, The Film Reader by by Elizabeth Ezra and Terry Rowden, have allowed me to rethink how the Western culture industry (i.e. Hollywood) might be a globalizing industry, but also a glocalizing one. I would argue that, while the American culture industry has expanded its reach around the globe, the glocalizing efforts of Nollywood film producers are challenging the assumed role of cultural production as a primarily profit-driven industry to placate and market to consumers.

In “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” (1944), Marxist critics Adorno and Horkheimer criticize film and radio productions (among other industries) for their creation of artless, homogenous, and deceptive cultural products, referencing specific examples of popular film, television, and music in their analysis. They claim that “the whole world is passed through the filter of the culture industry” (56), but our class discussions on transnationalism have prompted me to ask how the culture industry is filtered in other parts of the world in the current era of globalization.

Near the beginning of their introduction, Ezra and Rowden explain how the Hollywood entertainment industry, much like Adorno and Horkheimer claimed, “has succeeded in maintaining its hegemonic influence in large part by imagining the global audience as a world of sensation-starved children” (2). Put another way, the target audience is the democratic audience, and the Hollywood industry considers all possible approaches to a story so that no work can really be considered unique or challenging.

However, what Adorno and Horheimer perhaps did not anticipate, and what Ezra and Rowden draw attention to, is the emergence of parallel culture industries in non-Western nations. The lower cost and greater accessibility of filmmaking equipment allow individuals from around the world to create their own films without any expectations of network studios, corporate funding, or a theater release and then DVD distribution system. According to Ezra and Rowden, this new, accepted, and even celebrated standard of filmmaking “has facilitated the rise of a culture of access that functions as a delegitimizing shadow of the official film cultures of most nation-states as they have been determined by the processes of screening, censorship, rating, and critique” (6). With this idea in mind, I’d like to think about two alternative national cultural industries that, while capturing national issues in many of their films, demonstrate how the new “cine-literacy,” or storytelling through film, can lead to transnational moments.

Bollywood has become one of the largest film industries in the world; Indian producers borrow their action, comedy, romance, drama, and musical genres from the West, and many of their plotlines revolve around typical themes of love and power. Adorno might say this reveals how the tool of the “technically enforced ubiquity of stereotypes” (60) is applicable in any society. Nonetheless, what Bollywood has done differently from Hollywood is integrate uniquely Indian struggles and customs into their films. For example, the 2011 Indian film Aarakshan caused a lot of controversy because of its direct attempt to critique the caste system and other aspects of traditional Indian society. The film features several well-known Bollywood actors, and the movie posters, seen below, draw particular attention to social issues that are specific to India. The film drew mediocre box office sales, partially because of the fact that the film was banned in three states.

Movie poster for “Aarakshan”

Despite borrowing the styles and tools popularized by Hollywood cinema, Bollywood films may be distinguished from Hollywood films because of their attempts to address specific national social and cultural issues. Because of these distinctions, it was Bollywood film, rather than Hollywood film, that had a profound impact on audiences within the Hausa culture of northern Nigeria. Nigerians were not an audience that Bollywood producers had in mind when they created their films, but anthropologist Brian Larkin indicates that Indian films became popularized in Nigeria because they presented a “parallel modernity” that Hausa men and women could identify with. He claims that Indian film offered Nigerians “an alternative world, similar to their own, from which they may imagine other forms of fashion, beauty, love, romance, coloniality and postcoloniality” (351). This unique moment reveals how a national cinema had an unexpected affect when read by a completely different national and regional audience.

Although the industry is seldom acknowledged outside of Africa, Nollywood has become a highly successful cultural entity that produces 2,000 films per year. What places the Nollywood phenomenon at the greatest contrast to Adorno’s culture industry conception is the fact that Nigerian producers are not as evidently focused on the market value of their products. The film narratives mostly stem not from capitalist ideology or redundant Hollywood plot lines, but rather from newspaper rumors and local folklore (McCall 2007: 96). Further, most Nigerian films are shot in about a week with cheap digital devices, and are distributed as direct-to-CD products that are often pirated. In this sense, those who truly benefit from Nollywood are not the producers or elites, but rather the viewers from Nigeria and many other parts of Africa, who have finally found a medium that highlights local ideas rather than Western ones.

Subtitled screenshot from the low-budget Nollywood film, “Ajum Akwam Iko”

In short, what I have learned from the transnational film unit is that Western film industries are not necessarily homogenizing, infantilizing forces. Although emerging “Third Cinema,” or non-Western, film industries may parallel Hollywood film in some ways, it is evident that the film narratives and economies of production differ greatly from traditional styles and methods. While a lot of foreign films continue to reflect national and local issues, it is interesting to see how the films are consumed and appreciated by multinational audiences. I think the parallel modernities, or alternative culture industries, that are constantly developing will be worthwhile subjects for students of cultural studies to explore further.

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.

I remember reviewing the syllabus at the beginning of the semester and seeing that there was only one novel that I had previously read and analyzed in a seminar about trauma and memory from Mexico, 1968. Therefore, Amulet was very familiar to me but it became unfamiliar when I saw it in this transnational seminar. I could not understand why this novel was transnational because I read and studied it as part of the Culture, Politics and Memory of Mexico. Therefore, in my mind, there was a relation to the trauma perspective and how to define Mexican history and the present. These were some of the most important points for the readings in that seminar–and I thought the only ones–, however I did not find the connection with the transnational idea, other than that the author was Chilean. My first approach to seeing the novel as global happened after reading Global Matters by Paul Jay. The fact that Jay argues in his novel that transnational and global begin when the Eurocentric approach to literature changes to minority and postcolonial ones made me think of Amulet again. However, in the same book, there were some theorists like Said who pointed out the problems to define globalization and its impact with national literatures. At this point, there was a month left to read the novel from a transnational point of view, but I started thinking, perhaps, Amulet was a “hybrid” novel and that it would be possible to study it as the trauma and hallucinations of Auxilio like a national book that tells the world what happened in 1968, and also as a transnational novel.

Perspepolis and Kraniauskas´article also gave me some clues about transnationalism and globalization and after remembering how relevant the sixties were for the world– the murder of Martin Luther King and president Kennedy, the French May…–, I started thinking of these events in terms of their visibility and dissemination to the world and thus, my mind changed from a national to a transnational idea. Mostly, whereas watching the video in class of the two black championship men with their fist raised up in the Olympic Games and discussing in the seminar  all the events that taking place in the world in the 60s, I realized that the Mexican movement can be understood as more than a traumatic event for Mexicans. It seems like the rest of the world understood this student protest as a fight for their rights.

Nevertheless, by the middle of October, I had the opportunity to talk about the Mexican movement with Professor Aguilar Mora, one of the Mexican witnesses of the movement of ‘68 and I asked him if he realized how important and global the protest movement was for the world at that moment. He was not sure how to answer me and after a few minutes, he told me: “What do you think? Was it global for you?” I said “yes” because it was a reference for other events around the world, and then, he thought, “Ok, maybe you are right but I did not think about it that way. I was there December the 2^nd and then I went to France and I heard nothing about it from there on. I did not know this event went beyond Mexico.”  These words impacted me a lot because I had thought like he did at the beginning this transnational seminar: “The student movement was in 1968 and the novels about it are written by telling how to narrate the trauma and give voice to the Mexican people themselves. These kind of novels are total novels because they deal with issues in Mexico, but have nothing to do with transnationalism”, I thought.

However, Amulet was studied at the end of October and I had all of these feelings, thoughts and information in my mind after reading the transnational articles and books: Open City, Borderlands/ La Frontera, Bhabha´s, Appadurai´s, and Jay´s articles… I faced Amulet with new “eyes”, maybe transnational one, and while I was rereading the novel, I did not focus on the plot but the facts which make it transnational: Auxilio was an Uruguayan exile, Elena´s boyfriend was Italian, and some of the poets Auxilio met were from different parts of the world. When I read the novel for the first time I did not even think of Auxilio´s origin but her life as a servant of an important writer, her relationships, when she was trapped in the bathroom on the fourth floor, her hallucinations….This time, however, I read it differently and I noticed all of those transnational nuances, and the fact that a Chilean is the author of the novel makes much more sense for me from a transnational perspective.

Transnationalism embraces many concepts like hybridity, frontiers, in-betweeness, migration, agency, capitalism…and all of them already helped me when re-reading Amulet and reading another novel called Los traductores del viento,  (The translators of the wind) from a transnational point of view. That is why I am sure this perspective will help me also in the future. From the cultural view, I would like to add that I also rethought the massacre of Mexico ‘68 this year, unfortunately, with the new massacre in Iguala, Mexico. This time, however, it is different because 1968 “awoke the world,” and nowadays the Mexicans manifested and looked for guilty parties, some of whom are already in jail. Being visible in all countries, the whole world condemned the massacre at that point and the transnational events were clearer with protests and demonstrations everywhere, even from the different political parties around the world.

According to Jay, the best literature is that which transcends historical and national barriers. I add that it is also reflected in the other areas like culture and ways of thinking. The study and knowledge of the concepts above let me think differently about literature, culture and life in general and I will take them into account and apply them in my future readings, essays, conferences and teaching.

I am completing a PhD specializing in 20th Century Spanish Literature combined with Transatlantic Studies. I am interested in Spanish writers in exile who came here to America (US and Latin America) during Franco’s dictatorship and in Spanish women’s travel writing, written by women who came here for travelling or other reasons. These topics are dissimilar but they have something in common: both are manners of displacement, both are forms of being away from the place of origin, both are ways of crossing national borders, both imply an encounter with “the other” (other language, other culture) and both entail the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean.

One of my motivations to focus on that particular field was because I also consider myself a transatlantic product.  The first year I came to the United States was for working and studying because I got a grant. But after my first year, I decided to stay longer. First, because I like teaching and literature and I considered the American Doctoral system much more enriching than the system of my country. Secondly, I am also here because in my country I would not have the same opportunities that I enjoy here: universities have no funding, there are no jobs and the rate of unemployment is rising. Honestly, when some people ask me why I am here, I think more and more about the second reason I have just mentioned. Of course, I am not an exile as one of those writers I am interested in; I am not here due to political reasons and neither am I a woman traveller. However, considering some factors, I could say I am here because I could not live in my country doing what I want, which makes me think it over. There are a lot of people in my country of my generation who are unemployed and they cannot afford to pay for study anymore. They do not seem to  be obliged to run away from the country but they are spreading out to different places, working in whatever they find. Could they be considered immigrants? Or, is this a new era of young “exiled” people? Going abroad and travelling were a privilege which allowed us to enjoy unlimited freedom and more capacity for learning…now, it is different and displacements are part of our daily lives.

After taking this course, I can think about this situation in a different way. I could say that globalization creates a world in which borders are just lines on a map. Going through the contents we have studied, the topic I liked most was the study of transnationalism in exile, travel and migration. Also, these topics would help me to create stronger thoughts and hypothesis about space and displacement, which I am very particularly interested in for my future thesis or projects either in exile or women’s travels. I found very thought-provoking the ideas of “the place in between”, “non-places” and the discussions we had about belonging to a place, not belonging to a place and feeling part of it, and how all of these generates a way of rethinking identity. The limitations of the human in new places different from their places of origin are the “new borders” which lead me to think about the entity of the “hybrid” to redefine the phenomena of travel and displacement in the society of the past century and today. It also provides me a critical and theoretical framework for my future investigations as I would like to focus on spaces, travel and TransAtlantic theories for thinking about a new entity of the “traveller” and/or the “immigrant” and supporting my conclusions with particular examples.

To conclude, “Transnationalism” is a phenomenon that has always existed. From the time of the first travels to the New World to today, it  has been a factor of progress but also a factor very conditioned and manipulated economically and politically. It is difficult to establish a definition of it because this very complex term is determined by many aspects. But theories which enclose this term let us study “through” and to “the other side” of the frontiers. In this course, we have studied contemporary literature and cultural studies from a transnational perspective which make us think beyond the national to understand literature and culture from a more global, international and cosmopolitan perspective. This complements what I learned last semester in the course of “Landscapes, Provinces and Cities: Reflections on Space.” I had previously studied Kaplan’s theory of travel and displacement and I have a broader idea now that I could combine it with Kaplan and Grewal’s theory of “Global Identities and Sexuality” which would also help me to consolidate ideas in feminism as part of “women’s travel.”

Over the course of this semester, I have been introduced to a great deal of new ideas, concepts, and texts in regard to transnational theory and literature.  One text and concept that was particularly interesting and innovated my understanding of transnationalism was Kwame Anthony Appiah’s Cosmopolitanism as the concept of Cosmopolitanism is something that I had never previously been exposed to but that really resonated with my personal experiences and understanding of the global community.  Appiah’s descriptions and examples of cosmopolitan considerations of global issues are concise and evocative, I really enjoyed reading this text and learning more about his real world applications of these concepts.  The blend of Appiah’s personal experiences as a mixed race individual living in Africa, the United States, and Europe endow the book with a really engaging hybridized genre somewhere between non-fiction and personal narrative and autobiography.  Appiah’s integration of his personal experiences in Ghana create a relatable dimension in the book that made what could have been a very dry and distanced subject matter very engaging and captivating for me.

I learned a great deal about Cosmopolitanism in the book and how this philosophy extends to ever social issue and culture in the world.  Something that particularly resonated with me was his argument about what he refers to as “social trends.”  Here Appiah cites examples from both Western and non-Western culture which, since they come to very similar results, shows the global nature of Cosmopolitanism.  Appiah’s example of foot-binding in China, for example, necessitates a more profound and wider consideration than is usually directed towards this brutal and archaic practice by a Western audience.  Appiah does not let the issue go with this usual approach but rather dissects it further.  He incites the ostracism of women with bound feet by the formation of “natural-foot societies” after the end of the foot-binding practice in China to reveal the deeper complexities of just renouncing and developing a repulsed attitude towards a custom that traversed centuries of traditional Chinese culture.  I found this idea very interesting as it shows a common habit that I see among American and other Western societies.

The West is so quick to judge and denounce “archaic and oppressive” behaviors in other cultures, whether that be foot-binding in China, the wearing of the hijab in the Middle East, or exclusion of gay athletes in the Sochi Olympics, when in reality we, as a society, have not progressed past many of these issues ourselves.  The liberal humanist in all of us wants to support the underdog, to denounce oppression, and to achieve the “American dream” for everyone, however, as Appiah argues, supporting progressive movements for one’s own self-gratitude alone is not conducive to a productive global community nor the progression of these “oppressed individuals” out of their marginalized state.  As we saw with FemEn’s anti-veil demonstrations did not lead to the liberation of poor, oppressed, and dominated Muslim women but rather marginalized them from the feminist movement altogether and further oppressed their personal freedom of expression.  Rather than projecting its own manifest destiny onto nations that it deems less developed, the West should focus on developing its own social trends.  What right do we have to endow oppressed Muslim women with our vision of liberated femininity when American and European women still contend with living in patriarchal environments that perpetuate rape culture, the male gaze, and unequal working conditions?

Another example of this sort of Western hypocrisy that came to my mind while reading Appiah was last year’s Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia.  During these Olympic games there was a great deal of controversy regarding Russia’s refusal to allow gay athletes to participate in the events.  Western media responded to this decision by Putin—representative of all things communist and anti-American—with outrage, yet, as Appiah reminds us, “…in much of Europe and North America… a generation ago homosexuals were social outcasts and homosexual acts were illegal…” (Appiah 77).  Here we see the occidental superiority at work again as it hypocritically denounces a non-Western government for doing the same exact thing that our own society would have supported until very recently.  In this way, Appiah’s book really made me reconsider the “developed” versus “developing” labels that we so strictly adhere to in the West.  Recent events such as the Ferguson trial prove that we are still in the process of developing ourselves and therefore have no right to look down upon other nations from a position of superiority and haughtiness.  I absolutely agree with the movements in support of inclusion of the LGBTQ community in the Sochi Olympics, however, such movements should not come down from a pedestal of superiority but from the employment of our own experiences as a nation as a cautionary tale.  

So this will probably come off as a little ridiculous, but I had never been asked to discuss my ideas on “transnationalism” before enrolling in this class. While this may seem a broad topic, it really took a lot of my energy and focus to fully comprehend transnationalism and all of its qualities, many of which we discussed in class. I feel like I identified the most with the novels we read for the class and how they exemplified transnationalism as a whole. I learned a lot from Teju Cole’s Open City, which is the text I will use here to describe how I came to truly comprehend the idea of transnationalism (as opposed to cosmopolitanism, globalization, internationalism, etc., that we discussed on the first day of class this semester). To begin, I find that the idea of transnationalism (or using a transnational approach to writing) is crucial to creating a paper/thesis, mainly because while many of us our stuck in our ways of taking psychoanalytical, Marxist, or feminist approaches to literature in our respective language fields, it is imperative for us to realize that other nations and peoples influence the foreign literature that we study.

Something I used to find distinctly and only French in nature, one of my favorite literary forms from Charles Perrault, are the contes de fees, or fairy tales. To put it in basic terms, nothing is black and white. Nothing can be purely French in my eyes anymore. There are always other factors—namely, transnationalism. Yes, Perrault wrote them in French and he was inspired by tales from French history, the idea of the fairy tale comes from the more general folk tale, a genre that comes from numerous regions around the globe; thus, delving deeper into Perrault’s influences, I found that he may have read texts from other countries such as Spain, Germany, and Italy. That’s just one way in which transnationalism has affected my academic work thus far.

In Cole’s Open City, at first glance I perceived the story as merely that of an immigrant now completely enmeshed in New York City life. But it was so much more! His life, as well as that of his friend, Professor Saito, proved a network of transnational experiences. Regarding Professor Saito, “[Following the Second World War] The last subject was so total in its distance from my experience that it was perhaps of most interest to me. The war had broken out just as he was finishing his D.Phil, and he was forced to leave England and return to his family in the Pacific Northwest. With them, shortly afterward, he was taken to internment in the Minidoka Camp in Idaho” (Cole 9). Saito’s life cannot be condensed into his tenure at Maxwell College; rather, his life experiences and movement from country to country, across multiple borders, fashioned him into the scholar he is at the moment when Julius visits him at the beginning of the novel.

The reader is only introduced to the transnational elements surrounding the life of Julius in Chapter Six. “The name Julius linked me to another place and was, with my passport and my skin color, one of the intensifiers of my sense of being different, of being set apart, in Nigeria. I had a Yoruba middle name, Olatubosun, which I never used…Being Julius in everyday life thus confirmed me in my not being fully Nigerian. [On his name being taken from his mother who, in turn, was named after a relative] She had in her early twenties extricated herself from Germany and run off to the United States; Julianna Müller had become Julianne Miller” (Cole 78). We discover more about circumstances surrounding our narrator’s youth and his disembarkation from Nigeria for university later on in the text, but from this passage we learn of his Nigerian and German descent and how both nationalities held a profound influence over his upbringing as well as his identity. His name, Julius, is not Nigerian but German in origin. So we discover our narrator is more than his Nigerian heritage; he is profoundly linked in multiple ways, transnationally speaking, to other countries. Here we find he is linked to Germany; later we find his link to Belgium.

While I’ve only cited a few examples in this post of the importance of transnationalism in Open City, the text is full of many other examples. This book, along with Satrapi’s Persepolis and Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera, greatly influenced my final group project members and I to look at transnationalism and border-crossings on many different levels, including historically, physically, and politically. We wanted to demonstrate a creative method (a virtual museum) to utilize, in depth, our comprehension of transnationalism.