Transnational America
Feminisms, Diasporas, Neoliberalisms
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Duke University Press
Published:28th Jun '05
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
A study of South Asian Americans which views both their identity and that of America as constructed transnationally between the U.S. and India.
In Transnational America, Inderpal Grewal examines how the circulation of people, goods, social movements, and rights discourses during the 1990s created transnational subjects shaped by a global American culture. Rather than simply frame the United States as an imperialist nation-state that imposes unilateral political power in the world, Grewal analyzes how the concept of “America” functions as a nationalist discourse beyond the boundaries of the United States by disseminating an ideal of democratic citizenship through consumer practices. She develops her argument by focusing on South Asians in India and the United States.
Grewal combines a postcolonial perspective with social and cultural theory to argue that contemporary notions of gender, race, class, and nationality are linked to earlier histories of colonization. Through an analysis of Mattel’s sales of Barbie dolls in India, she discusses the consumption of American products by middle-class Indian women newly empowered with financial means created by India’s market liberalization. Considering the fate of asylum-seekers, Grewal looks at how a global feminism in which female refugees are figured as human rights victims emerged from a distinctly Western perspective. She reveals in the work of three novelists who emigrated from India to the United States—Bharati Mukherjee, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, and Amitav Ghosh—a concept of Americanness linked to cosmopolitanism. In Transnational America Grewal makes a powerful, nuanced case that the United States must be understood—and studied—as a dynamic entity produced and transformed both within and far beyond its territorial boundaries.
“Inderpal Grewal deftly combines postcolonial, transnational, and feminist approaches to the study of neoliberalism and consumerism in this timely and important book. The challenges it raises for area studies and disciplinary formations are sure to excite argument and debate in many different quarters.”—Akhil Gupta, author of Postcolonial Developments: Agriculture in the Making of Modern India
“Inderpal Grewal produces profound insights by bringing together disparate contemporary cultural, economic, and political phenomena within a single analytic framework, that of ‘transnational America.’ The acuity, gravity, and strenuous scholarship that mark her writing reflect the conviction that such an understanding is a crucial precondition for social transformation. This book is an important intervention by one of the foremost feminist postcolonial critics in the United States academy today.”—Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, author of The Scandal of the State: Women, Law, and Citizenship in Postcolonial India
“Transnational America offers a sophisticated analysis of the complex and varied mechanisms that shore up the global economic system. Grewal’s choice of topic alone is welcome. It is refreshing to encounter such a highly developed appreciation of the critical role of discourse. Grewal handles her subject matter with subtlety and precision. . . . Grewal’s compelling thesis on the pervasive nature of America’s transnational neoliberal regime presents itself forcefully.” -- Zoe Gordon * International Feminist Journal of Politics *
“In Transnational America, Grewal offers an insightful and provocative analysis of the complex relationship between politics, consumption, culture and power in the creation of global subjectivities. In doing so, Grewal illustrates the usefulness of postcolonial theory as a prism through which to critically explore the entanglement of geopolitics and biopolitics with the disciplinary and governmental technologies that created neoliberal subjects at the end of the twentieth century. Transnational America raises important questions for those willing to confront the classed, racialized and gendered assumptions that underpin ‘the global’ in Western politics.” -- Sandra Dawson * Interventions *
ISBN: 9780822335443
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 431g
296 pages