Instructor: Prof. Madina Tlostanova
Borders and Transculturality: the shaping of the new critical paradigm
Goals:
The seminar is meant for senior students and Masters. It is built around the two
interrelated concepts, laying in the basis of the new epistemic model that is being shaped
today — borders and transculturality. The idea of transcultural is re-focused in this
course into the question of new understanding of the borders. And the link between them
is the imperial and colonial difference which lies in the basis of geo-cultural, geopolitical, geo-epistemic configurations of modernity. Hence in the course we will look at
the borders from the imperial and colonial difference as formulated and expressed in
different locales (the Caribbean, Eastern and Central Europe, the Soviet/Russian excolonies, etc.). Colonial and imperial differences imply and give birth to the specific
border thinking and epistemology as a consequence of complex interplays of local
histories and global designs, which do not simply tell the stories of individual empires
and their colonies, or compare them with others, but rather concentrate on their
territorial, political, economical, religious, cultural intersections. In the course we will try
to analyze precisely what border perspectives bring into our understanding of
modernity and how the border epistemology as a consequence of transcultural processes
shapes a new paradigm and forms new coalitions, which rejecting the eurocentric
universalism — generate their own critical border forms of communitarianism.
Today a massive “borderization” of thinking is taking place throughout the world that
balances and in some cases overweighs the unifying tendencies of globalization and
borders instead of territories and frontiers are becoming the focus of research and
epistemic perspectives from the (ex)colonies and from the subaltern empires, that open
up the ways to a more general, trans-modern view of the world history. Looking at
borders/liminality as specific sites of power shaped by imperial and colonial differences,
would allow to overcome the limitation of the understanding of borders as messy
transitory moments that need to be brought into the homogenizing absolute schemes, as
theorized by many Western scholars and their non-Western counterparts.
Starting and departing from the traditional understanding of borders as defined in
anthropology, ethnology, cultural studies, etc. the course gradually shifts the emphasis
from the sociological and historical questions to the epistemic dimension of the emerging
border thinking realized in transcultural terms and carrying its important ethical and
political consequences. It also questions traditional disciplinary boundaries and the
territorial epistemology which the social sciences and the humanities were grounded in.
All this problematic emerges today in diverse alternative and critical epistemic models
unfolding in the world and reconsidering modernity in the critical way in the complex
correlation with geopolitical,
geo-cultural and geo-epistemic local and global
configurations.
Tasks and Evaluations:
Readings for the seminar include several texts from all over the world (the USA, Latin
America, Caribbean, Eastern Europe, etc., specific reading assignments are given for
each class). The classes will be held in English. During the course 4—5 students per
meeting will be responsible for the discussion related to the specific theme of the
particular class. They will prepare short statements (1 page) framing the discussion and
distribute it to the rest of the class beforehand. The course consists of 11 two-hour
meetings in which lectures will be combined and intertwined with problem-based
discussions which constitute the core of the seminar. That is why an important
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requirement is that the students read all the required materials and handouts and actively
work with them. Normally they will be one—two texts offered for discussions for each
class. The students will have to write one final paper. For the midterm conference the
students will be required to turn in a 5 pp. abstract of the future paper they propose to do
for the final course requirements, explaining what texts and what theoretical approaches
they will use, and anticipating conclusions. There will be a discussion of the feasibility
and approach using peer critiques to aid in writing the final versions (20-25 pp., due at
the end of the semester; 70% of grade).
The evaluation of students performance will be as follows:
Leading the discussion — 15 %
General class participation — 15 %
Final paper – 70%
The seminar will include the following topics :
Meeting 1: Border in traditional understanding and in the emerging border studies
(mode: an introductory lecture).
Meeting 2 : Trans-culturation, its origins and
modern interpretation (mode:
lecture/seminar)
Reading:
Mignolo W.D. 2002. “The Zapatistas’s Theoretical Revolution”. Review. Fernand Braudel
Center. Vol. XXV, Number 3. , pp. 245-275.
Meeting 3: Borders in Western postmodernism and in various sub-discourses of otherness
(gender, homoerotic, ecological, cyber, etc). (mode: lecture/seminar)
Reading:
Derrida J. 1984. “Living on Borderlines”. Deconstruction and Criticism. Ed. J. Hartman.
N.Y.: Continuum.
Meeting 4: Border in postcolonial theory (mode: lecture/seminar).
Reading:
1. Bhabha, H. The Location of Culture. Routledge, L.& N.Y., 1994, pp. 212-235.
2. Ashcroft B. “Horizon”. Postcolonial Transformation. L.N.Y.: Routledge, 2001, pp.
182-205.
Meeting 5: The “local” manifestations of border theorizing: the Caribbean experience
(mode: lecture/seminar)
Reading:
1. Gordon L. R. “Existential Borders of Anonymity and Superfluous Invisibility”.
Existentia Africana. Understanding Africana Existential Thought. N.Y. L.: Routledge,
2000. pp. 153-163.
2. Glissant E. 1997. Poetics of Relation. trans. B. Wing. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan
Press. Pp. 11-22 (“Errantry”, “Exile”) , 63-75 (“Closed Place, Open Word”), 111-120
(“Transparency, Opacity”), 189-194 (“For Opacity”).
Meeting 6: The “local” manifestations of border theorizing: Central and Eastern
European experience. European integration and redrawing borders. (seminar/lecture).
Reading:
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1. Krasnogruda. 1998. No 8, Sejny — Stockholm: Czyzewski K. “The Atlantis Complex,
or Central Europe after the End of the World” (pp. 13-18); Debeljak A. “After the Great
Utopia” (p. 19-26); Piotrowsky P. “Post-War Central Europe: Art, History and
Geography” (p. 27-34).
2. Lotman, Yuri. Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press. 1990. Chapter about “Borders”.
Meeting 7: General conference discussing the projects for final papers (mode –
discussion).
Film: G. Danelia Passport, France, Israel, Russia, 1990.
Meeting 8: The “local” manifestations of border theorizing: Chicano theorizing of
borders (seminar/lecture).
1. Anzaldúa, G. Borderlands/ La Frontera. The New Mestiza. San Francisco, 1999,
pp. 99-113.
2. José David Saldívar. Border Matters. Remapping American Cultural Studies.
University of California Press, 1997. “Cultural Theory in US-Mexico Borderlands”.
(pp. 17-35)
Meeting 9: Tools for border thinking : “Coloniality of power”, colonial and imperial
difference. The concepts of exteriority and trans-modernity.
(mode: lecture/seminar).
1. Quijano, A. 2000. “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America”. —
Nepantla 1.3, 533—580.
2. Maldonado-Torres N. The Topology of Being and the Geopolitics of Knowledge.
Modernity, Empire, Coloniality. City, Vol. 8, No. 1, April 2004.
Meeting 10: Language, epistemologies and borders (mode: lecture/seminar).
1. Thiongo Ngugi wa. “The Language of African Literature”. The Post-colonial Studies
Reader. Ed. B. Aschroft, G. Griffiths, H. Tiffin, L., N.Y.: Routledge, 1995, pp. 285-290
2. Brathwaite E. K. “Nation Language”. The Post-colonial Studies Reader. Ed. B.
Aschroft, G. Griffiths, H. Tiffin, L., N.Y.: Routledge, 1995, pp. 309-313.
Meeting 11: Critical border thinking and critical cosmopolitanism as a new episteme
(mode: lecture/discussion)
Guest Speaker – Walter D. Mignolo, William H. Wannamaker Distinguished Professor
of Romance Studies, Professor of Literature and Cultural anthropology, Duke University,
North Carolina.
Mignolo W. D. 2000. “The Many Faces of Cosmo-polis: Border Thinking and Critical
Cosmopolitanism”. Public Culture, vol. 12, Number 3, Fall, 721—748.
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