Transnationalism in American Studies by Greg Robinson (& more of my excretions)

Once again, the full texts of Robinson, Rowe and Hornung, including bibliographies, can be accessed here. 

[n.b. I had another moment of paper-writing panic this morning as I asked myself what I have to say about any of this. The single biggest provocation to this writer's-panic is that - if I were to wonder, apropos any of these three authors, where the scholarly considerations of the spread (and transformation?) of the commodity form are and whether they ask how it does or does not reflect the spread of specifically US economic power, or whether it derives rather from the "global market" directly - if I ask this or feel that none of the texts that I am looking at seem to indicate any interest in this question - I am thrown back on my inhibiting conditions (or perhaps my "horizon of impossibility"). That is, I've no scholarly right to find fault for this lack unless I am certain it is a lack. As such, I would have to know the field I am looking at well enough to make that judgment. But as noted before, I am none of these things: an americanist, historian, etc. This is simply not my field, ergo, on what platform do I stand to offer a critical response? If I cannot, somehow, answer this question, I do not know how I can do much more than the squeeze out more of the sorts of loads you can read below. (Same convention as before btw, Robinson's text will be inset and of a different color than my own).]

Transnationalism in American Studies by Greg Robinson

Greg Robinson

In the wake of the communications and information revolutions, national borders have grown less relevant at the dawn of the 21st century, while the growth of multinational political and economic structures (including corporations, trading blocs, and NGOs) has reduced the centrality of nation-states as actors in world affairs. Even as such globalization has reshaped society in a more visibly transnational fashion, the study of transnationalism—often associated with the phrase the “transnational turn”—has become a growing area of concentration for scholars in the field of American studies. Put in its simplest terms, Transnational American studies explores the varieties of American culture and of American experience(s) in a larger framework that stretches beyond the national borders of the United States.

. . . The opening claim here is one that it would be hard not to have heard before. Undoubtedly there is a lot of basic truth to the claim, there is something corresponding to the "decline of the state-form" happening and it continues to happen. The 'average' country in the 2nd or 3rd worlds is at a distinct disadvantage when dealing with the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank, both institutions being profound allies of the ruling "super-powers" and the neoliberal market philosophy that they all propound in their own ways. But there are also aspects of this decline that I have some reservations about. Certainly if a small country has lost any possibility of refusing the adoption of an economic platform imposed upon it and any real leverage with which to bargain if unhappy about the activities of multinational corporations that are now "investing" there, then this state has either lost power, or perhaps it is merely being revealed that it never had it to begin with. But thinking of the situation of the States or China, I wonder if the term "decline" is really the best way to think about this. Isn't one of the maxims of corporate activity that one should try to maximize the externalization of costs wherever possible? By externalization, what is meant is things like this: a factory is running inside the U.S. it may face additional charges or penalties because of the waste it produces because of the laws about such matters here. But if it can relocate to Indonesia or anywhere that does not have such environmental laws, then all of that cost - of eventually dealing with or suffering on account of - the waste produced, can simply be forgotten - its costs are external to the running of the corporation itself. Then, given that the misnamed "regime change" that occurs in the States when a Democrat replaces a Republican or vice versa, does not reflect substantial changes in the arena of law pertaining to capitalism or corporate culture generally, but instead only a different power-bloc of supporting interests… Can we not view the state-form itself as not so much declining, as out-sourcing and externalizing costs in much the same way? Rather than sending U.S. military to fight every economic-ideological battle, it can rely on the IMF and World Bank - how is this not structurally equivalent to the externalization of costs sacred to corporations? If I were somehow able to convince (force) my neighbor that it was his duty to mow my lawn, such that I now never did this labor myself, but could simply count on him doing it - have my "powers" declined as a result? It's a silly example, but gets at my uncertainty about the term "decline". 

. . . And here we might also wonder about Robinson's claim that "national borders have grown less relevant" again asking whose national borders? Here in the States we have a rather well known wall at the border to Mexico which is patrolled, not simply by legal border patrol officers, but in some cases by what I can only call vigilantes, US citizens who are so worried about illegal immigration that they take this task as their own under the sign of "patriotism" (sic). Presumably it is Americans who feel this way who buy the many billboards that one can see in the States which read "Stop The Invasion" and depict a map of the border of the U.S. and Mexico. It would seem to me that while some borders have become less relevant, that others have become privileged sites of ideological combat, often with highly racist aspects fully engaged. Of course at the level of the global market, borders have become somewhat easy to ignore, as large flows of capital cross borders in the wink of an eye. But this freedom of movement for capital has not been paralleled by a freedom of movement for people (unless we count the functionaries of these large capital flows).

. . . As such, to restate once again - if the States is one of the primary (if not the primary) instigator of the spread of neoliberal market practice world-wide, and if the States has externalized many functions it had previous dealt with in other ways in that process, are we really licensed to say that the state-form is in decline in the U.S. or that it has weakened? Is there scholarship in this field or subfield of transnational american studies that attends to these issues or is there not (here again we have the challenge to any criticism I might develop from these points).    

While the concept existed earlier in various forms, Robert Gross is generally credited with coining the phrase “the transnational turn” in a 2000 article in Journal of American Studies. In that article, Gross underlined the urgent importance in a globalized world of understanding and incorporating foreign perspectives on American life. “The immediate import of transnational thinking lies in the scholarly arena. For American Studies, the effect is akin to looking through the reverse lens of a telescope. What once loomed large has shrunk to insignificance. To globalize American Studies is to displace American perspectives on the subject” (Gross 384). Gross’s thesis was expanded by Shelley Fisher Fishkin in her 2004 Presidential Address to the American Studies Association. Fishkin asserted that the proper role of American studies was to examine critically the place of the United States in the international realm. “The goal of American studies scholarship is not exporting and championing an arrogant, pro-American nationalism but understanding the multiple meanings of America and American culture in all their complexity” (20). Fishkin continued that looking at the U.S. “from vantage points beyond its borders” would not only displace the hegemony of American self-regard, but would also permit scholars to gain a more nuanced, fluid, and multicultural understanding of what was (or could be defined as) “American.” As Fishkin put it, “We are likely to focus less on the United States as a static and stable territory and population whose characteristics it is our job to divine, and more on the nation as a participant in a global flow of people, ideas, texts, and products—albeit a participant who often tries to impede those flows” (24).

. . . While the quoted passage from Gross seems clear and reasonable I wonder if there are different significations involved in the successive iterations of "American"? If, per Rowe's earlier text, American Studies in some articulations can include the entire western hemisphere, plus the Atlantic and Pacific zones, then the "America" in the name refers to all of that area, but then when Robinson here says that this globalizing of American Studies acts to "displace American perspectives" does "America" signify the same thing? Or does it not refer to scholarly views of the United States by U.S. citizens that engage in "American Studies"? Perhaps the most immediate gain provided by the term "Western Hemispheric Studies" is that it at least has dropped the term "American" entirely. 

. . . Then to respond to the quoted passage from Fishkin at the end, while certainly these various flows are important to think about, document, etc. I cannot help but to wonder at the absence in the list of "people, ideas, texts, and products" of the term capital. Surely capital is not simply implicated in the flows of "people, ideas, texts, and products" but in the majority of instances required if these others are to actually flow. 

The roots of the transnational turn in American studies are multiple, and its development far from linear, but a few broad influences can be identified. First is the continuing contributions of borderlands scholars, led by Gloria Anzaldua. These scholars have dissected transborder relations and influences, starting in their own complex cultural heritage as Hispanic Americans, and have traced the larger cultural mestizaje and its mark on the totality of American society. (On a lesser scale, Gerard Bouchard and other scholars in Quebec, following in the footsteps of Lewis Hanke a generation earlier, challenged nationalist models of Canadian identity by positing aspects of a common quality or spirit of Américanité that characterized peoples across the Americas.) Another source is the increasing dissatisfaction of Americanists with a historical narrative that remained resolutely based in the nation-state—and inextricably entangled with nationalist politics—even as developments rendered the nation-state increasingly less important. In 1997, Thomas Bender organized a set of conferences at La Pietra, Italy, under the joint sponsorship of New York University and the Organization of American History, to figure out ways to reshape the historical scholarship and teaching of the past to reflect the new understanding of America’s essential interconnectedness with the world. These conferences ultimately resulted in the 2002 anthology Rethinking American History in a Global Age. Similarly, transnationalism takes off from the increased focus within American studies on global connections, and especially the cultural implications of American power in the world. Donald Pease proposed during the 1990s a “postnational” narrative, even as he and Amy Kaplan championed the study of imperialism in American studies. Their work encouraged scholars to examine ways in which American institutions and styles resonated outside the nation’s borders, and how its military dominion was translated into art and literature. A final factor, and arguably the most important, has been the growing importance of the field outside the United States. The exponential growth since the 1990s of American studies programs in other countries, notably China and the former Soviet bloc, has translated into an outpouring of work by scholars intimately familiar with other cultures, and informed by an international perspective. The proliferation of works that revolve around comparative study of American culture has in turn encouraged scholars in the United States to accept the need for discussion of American culture in an international setting—even if U.S.-based scholars have generally been slow to adopt source material or read texts in languages other than English.

. . . This paragraph largely reiterates the developmental history that Rowe already provided (and which Hornung will recount again from his perspective). I'll thus attend only to a few points here. The "increasing dissatisfaction of Americanists" with the extant historical narrative undoubtedly played a factor in this reconceptualization of the object of study, as it seems to me, it should. But at this late date, is there any practicing historian that doesn't recognize that there are a potentially infinite number of ways to write history? Around 1991 I took one of the few history courses that I ever really thought was exceptional. It was about Islam in South Asia and taught by Dr. Andre Wink at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Wink told us at one point of how he had been collecting material about the elephant in south asia and that he hoped to one day write a history of the elephant in this region. He spoke of another historian's similar work on the camel and how this book (which I am unable to identify, alas) was thought to be something of a scandal as it didn't focus on the traditional objects of historians, but that it had been a great success because of all the different directions that it took the author and, presumably, the author's skill in presenting all this data as an historical narrative. My point in all of that is simply to underline that of course the nation-state and national politics do not have to be the structuring principle of a historical or cultural study on something referenced by the term "American", and that it would seem to me at least that this awareness is by no means new. 

. . . I've already rehearsed my uncertainties about the term "post-national" and as yet I have nothing much to add to that (though my discussion of the purported decline of the state-form above is already an addition to that earlier discussion in the response to Rowe). 

Although the University of Kent in England inaugurated an MA program in Transnational American studies in 2010, transnationalism has remained for the most part an approach and a trope within the larger field of American studies, rather than establishing itself as a distinct category. Special editions of journals have appeared on the theme of transnationalism, beginning with American Quarterly’s September 1998 issue, devoted to investigating “the multivalent entangled connections between and among events and cultural phenomena across the world.” A significant institutional expression of the “transnational turn” was the establishment in 2008 of the Journal of Transnational American Studies, on online journal based at Stanford University and directed by an international team of scholars under the leadership of Shelley Fishkin and of Shirley Geok-Lin Lim. In addition to publishing original articles with a transnational focus, JTAS includes a “Forward” section that features excerpts from newly published and forthcoming publications and a “Reprise” section for older essays. It thereby acts as a publicist for other works in the field.

. . . I've no critical comments to make here. Though were I, or anyone else, deploying a Laclau and Mouffe style analysis of these developments, there is surely data here for thinking about this "transnational" discourse's efforts to establish hegemony. Of particular interest then would be the JTAS's "Reprise" section would could be read as trying to create a past for the term it is trying to secure. 

The label of transnationalism covers several approaches. Among them, first and most obviously, there is the theme of border crossings. Scholars pursuing this approach have traced the work of American creative artists, religious figures, and political activists within larger international networks and conversations, and have shown the multiple circles within which they interacted and from which they drew ideas and inspiration. Anna Brickhouse’s study of transamerican literary relations is a distinguished example, in which she examines connections and exchanges between canonical American authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, or Phillis Wheatley with precursors, commentators, and translators in Latin America. A related field is that of diasporic studies, of which Paul Gilroy’s work on the Black Atlantic has served as the ur-text. Works in this category trace pan-ethnic cultural exchange across borders in such forms as congresses, collective action, or feelings of identity. Penny von Eschen’s 1997 Race against Empire and Marc S. Gallicchio’s 2000 work The African American Encounter with China and Japan are two excellent examples. They each trace how African Americans looked outside the United States in order to transcend the limited role they were permitted to occupy in domestic affairs. Not only did they raise funds for African independence movements and associate themselves with struggles against white European domination, but they developed a cosmopolitan style in their communities that included elements adapted from foreign cultures.

. . . Again, I've nothing to add. These sound like interesting studies.

One compelling aspect of Transnational American studies, especially for historians, is its comparative dimension. With few exceptions, the historical literature on the United States has failed to treat major aspects of national life, such as immigration, the Welfare State, or official treatment of native peoples with reference to parallel movements elsewhere. A view of state policy across borders, particularly to the north and south, can be extremely revealing in terms of fleshing out popular attitudes. Greg Robinson’s A Tragedy of Democracy, for instance, recounts the official removal and internment of ethnic Japanese throughout North America (and including Latin Americans of Japanese ancestry) during World War II, and demonstrates the implications for understanding the U.S. government’s actions. Other studies have revealed the complex interface between national identity, domestic interests, and foreign relations. In addition to providing a context for diplomatic choices, scholars have broadened the scope of foreign policy actors from government and elites to artists, foreign travelers, and members of ethnic, racial, and religious groups. For example, Mary L. Dudziak’s Cold War Civil Rights (2002) examines how American government policy on civil rights was shaped by international considerations during the Cold War era. She reveals that national leaders, anxious to secure the support of nonwhite nations to the cause of the “free world” and counter Soviet propaganda, put a priority on securing civil rights for Black Americans at home because discrimination was an embarrassment internationally. The result was an unprecedented level of executive branch leadership, and intervention by State Department officials, in arguments before the courts and Congress.

. . . The actual work discussed again sounds fine. Undoubtedly these histories need to be told and if a comparative study between nations of issues like immigration are "extremely revealing" then, more power to them. I do wonder though about this claim, "In addition to providing a context for diplomatic choices, scholars have broadened the scope of foreign policy actors from government and elites to artists, foreign travelers, and members of ethnic, racial, and religious groups." Is there any evidence that scholars have really provided a "context" for diplomatic (that is governmental, political) decisions? Really? It would be great to think that this were true, but the text that is cited next by Dudziak surely cannot be an example of that. I would like to see whether that claim truly can be substantiated. I met a grad student when I was doing Asian Studies in Texas who was specializing in Pakistan's language, history, culture and politics. But I learned as well that he had a job already waiting for him in the field of American Military Intelligence - this is surely an example of scholarship in the service of providing a "context" for political decisions, and yet just as undoubtedly, this is not the sort of example that Robinson has in mind. It seems to me that while scholarship of whatever sort produces a lot of data and combines this into a narrative, often with arguments that have a political slant to them, that when government wants information about something, it has a long history of using that data for its own purposes. 

. . . At issue in much of this is the sometimes explicit sometimes implicit claim that scholarship can be or is political. I have many doubts about that but will have to come back to these later.

In sum, the “transnational turn” is a reaffirmation of the reality of American life and identity in a global age, and a rediscovery of the heritage of such connections. A transnational model provides tools to tie together these different strands—historical, ideological, and operational—and shed new light on the relevance of the larger field of American studies.

. . . Earlier Robinson remarked that "transnationalism has remained for the most part an approach and a trope within the larger field of American studies" but is this the same "larger field" that is references here? Is it larger in the sense that more people do "American Studies" with the referent of "American" being the US as nation-state? That this perspective has greater institutional support, more programs and journals, etc? I wonder only because the "America" that the transnationalists refer to would seem to be the larger object of study. 

. . . Then, at the risk of being not heard at all or assimilated to an unfashionable or maligned post-structuralist or deconstructionist perspective (which I would argue is not mine). I stumble at the easy and uncritical use of words like "reality" and "identity" as they appear here, seemingly presupposing an empiricism with regard to "reality" and a, to my eyes, naive conception of identity. Naive when applied to a solitary individual and when applied to "the reality of American life" far too unitary in conception to possibly do the work it is being made to do. "Reality," is itself a symbolic construct, culturally variable (and undoubtedly variable from person to person) which can never be totalized without hidden exclusions, reality is as such inherently "not whole." Further, any proposal to delineate "reality" would itself have to reflect ideological commitments both of the conscious and unconscious varieties, with its gaps being indexes of the ideological fantasy that inevitably subtends any articulation of "reality".