Thomas Lamarre Worlds of Difference

The central problematic of Minor Transnationalism is that of multiple determination in the context of subject formation or identity formation. The editors make the point clearly in their fine introduction and the contributors largely agree, in analyses evoking an exceedingly diverse range of socio-economic contexts and material conditions, that postcolonial theory tends to lapse into binary habits of thought, which in turn tend to reify and reinscribe the hierarchy of centre over periphery (margin), major over minor, or West over non-West. At stake in an exploration of minor transnationalism then is not the mere use of dualisms, binary oppositions, or dichotomies. Rather, as the references to relational thought that crop up in the introduction and in some of contributions suggest, the goal of looking at minor transnationalism is to move analysis beyond reciprocal determination toward multiple determination. Put another way, the goal is to think identity as a complex set of relations.