Postcolonial Theories: Nation, Migration and Globalization
Kate Liu
Class Times: Tues 9:10 – 12:00
Classroom: AV212
Email: kate@mail.fju.edu.tw
tel: 02-29053676
Office SF 124
Office Hours:
Monday morning,
Friday 3:00-4:30 and by appointment
Online Office JoinNet http://140.136.202.237 or MSN cat_mint_liu
Why nation, at a time when it seems so powerless?
The concept of nation, for me, is interesting, because, just looking around in this
world, we can find many embodiments of its powers and powerlessness, of its blind
support and mindless destruction. The concept of nation needs to be examined
precisely because it is both powerless and indispensible, with its powers penetrating
every aspect of our lives while also being undermined by the forces of the global
flows and capitalist empire(s). Once examined, “nation” is split into nation-state and
nationalism, national history and national signs, while its identity is found endlessly
constructed in literary works, reiterated by signs, contested by immigrants and
hybridized by the flows of international trade and information.
In the vast field of postcolonial discourses, therefore, this course uses “nation
(de-)formation” as a point of entry for our readings of the theories of nation, national
identity, national history, national control (biopolitics and ideological state apparatus),
diaspora, hybridity and globalization. The questions to ask are:
 How is a nation formed, and its identity imagined—by propaganda, ideologies,
literature and cultural works?
 How does a nation exert its control over its people?
 How are its boundaries, identity and control contested by literature of racial and
gender minorities, and/or by the forces of migration and globalization?
 If nation is no longer the focus of literary imagination, or the location of one’s
identity, what is? Is there another community constructed in place of the
national?
Besides focusing on discussing these issues, this course is designed for you to achieve
three objectives:
1) critical reading of both primary and secondary texts of modern and contemporary
theories to understand the questions they ask and how they answer them,
2) engagement in some theoretical issues (such as meaning and interpretation, text
and textuality, ethics and ideology, discourse, politics and power relations, etc.) as
they arise from our reading of the primary texts, and
3) analyzing literary texts from different theoretical perspectives with an awareness of
the limitations of each.
Many literary texts can be chosen to help us concretize the theoretical issues. For
instance,
 nation narration-文學—— 印／巴－ Salman Rushdie The Midnight's Children; Shame
英－
Victorian novels (e.g. Dickens, Eliot)
Mrs. Dalloway
Kazuo Ishiguru The Remains of the Day
Graham Swift Waterland
平路〈台灣奇蹟〉；張大春〈將軍碑〉、〈四喜憂
國〉
李昂《迷園》; 林燿德《高砂百合》
 national identity -- novels of American innocence
美 Gish Jen Typical American; Joan Didion Democracy;Bobbie Ann Mason In
Country
日 三島由紀夫 "Patriotism" v.s. 大江健三郎 "The Day he himself Wipes my
Tears Away"
台 侯孝賢《悲情城市》
 nation and gender -- Sara Suleri’s Meatless Days, Margaret Atwood’s The
Handmaid’s Tale; Bodily Harms, Timothy Findley The Wars
 diaspoa and city – Dionne Brand’s What We All Long For? Atom Egoyan The
Adjuster, Calendar, Exotica, etc.
 National and Global culture – Salman Rushdie The Ground Beneath her Feet
流行音樂——
豬頭皮、羅大佑、Bruce Springsteen, 龍的傳人
And the list can go on and on.
Requirements:
In this course, you will be responsible for:
1) active participation in class,
2) a 30-minute report on a theoretical text with an outline ready for online
publication,
3) a 30-minute report on how a certain theory can be "critiqued" by, "used" on,
or articulated with another literary or theoretical text.
4) a term paper of both theoretical discussion and literary application.
Tentative Schedule
Wk
Date
Examples
1
9/15.
Introduction
Laura Christman “Nationalism and Postcolonial Studies” 1
I.
Theories of Nation and (Post)colonial Nations
2
9/22
 Nation Formation: 1. a Historical Perspective
Frantz Fanon “On National Culture” 2
Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities 3
3
9/29
2. National as a Political Form and Fictive Ethnicity
Balibar, Etienne & Immanuel Wallenstein. "The Nation Form" 4
4
10/06
 Nation Narration
Brennan, Timothy. "The National Longing for Form." 44-70
Bhabha, Homi. "DissemiNation: Time, Narrative, and the
Margins of the Modern Nation." 291-322.
 Third-World National Allegory
F. Jameson “Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational
Capitalism” 5
A. Ahmad “Jameson’s Rhetoric of Otherness and the ‘National
Allegory’” 5
Ref. M. Sprinker “The National Question: Said, Ahmad,
Jameson” 6
5
10/13
6
10/20
II.
Theories of Migration and Globalization
7
10/27
8
11/03
 Global capitalism and biopolitics
M. Foucault The Birth of Biopolitics (excerpt) 9
9
11/10
Hardt and Negri Empire Part 1 10
10
11/17
G. Deleuze & F. Guattari.
 Postcolonial nations: examples
 Globalization Defined
Appadurai, Arjun. "Disjuncture and Difference in the Global
Cultural Economy." 7
Tomlinson, John. Globalization and Culture. (excerpt) 8
Anti Oedipus: Capitalism and
Schizophrenia 11
(excerpt)
11
11/24
 Postcolonialism and Postcoloniality
Graham Huggan Introduction. The Postcolonial Exotic 12
R. Frankenberg and Lata Mani “Crosscurrents, Crosstalk:
Race, Postcoloniality and the Politics of Location.” 2
12
12/01
 Migration and Hybridity
A. Smith “Migrancy, Hybridity, and Postcolonial Literary
Studies” 1
Friedman, Susan. “Beyond Difference: Migratory Feminism
in the Borderlands” 13
13
12/08
14
12/15
15
12/22
 Flows and Displacement
Introduction from Displacement 14
Castells, Manuel. "An Introduction to the Information Age." 15
 Transnational Feminism and Location
Caren Kaplan. Introduction Between Woman and Nation.
16
---. “Transporting the Subject: Technologies of Mobility and
Location in an Era of Globalization” 17
 Diaspora and Diasporization
S. Hall “Cultural and Identity Diaspora” 18
A. Brah, “Refiguring the ‘Multi’: the politics of difference,
commonality and universalism.” 19
Gayatri Gopinath. “Nostalgia, desire, diaspora: South Asian
sexualities in motion” 17
16
12/29
Migration and Globalization: Examples
17
01/05
Paper Presentation
18
01/12
Paper Presentation
Bibliography
1. Lazarus, Neil, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Literary Studies.
New York, Cambridge UP, 2004.
2. Brydon, Diana. Postcolonialism: Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural
Studies. Vols.II & V. NY: Routledge, 2000.
3. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and
Spread of Nationalism. rev. ed. NY: Verso, 1991 Chaps. 1-3
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Balibar, Etienne & Immanuel Wallenstein. "The Nation Form" Race, Nation,
Class: Ambiguous Identities. NY: Verso, 1991.
Bhabha, Homi, ed. Nation and Narration. NY: Routledge, 1990.
-- Brennan, Timothy. "The National Longing for Form." 44-70
-- Bhabha, Homi. "DissemiNation: Time, Narrative, and the Margins of the
Modern Nation." 291-322.
Sprinker, Michael.
Appadurai, Arjun. "Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural
Economy." Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization.
Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P: 1996, 27-47.
Tomlinson, John. Globalization and Culture. U of Chicago P: 1999.
9.
Foucault, Michel. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College de France,
1978-1979. Trans. Graham Burchell. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
10. Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri. Empire. Harvard UP, 2000.
11. Deleuze, Gilles, and Guattari, Félix. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and
schizophrenia. Trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane. New
York: Viking, 1977.
12. Huggan, Graham The Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins. NY:
Routledge, 2001.
13. Friedman, Susan Stanford. Mappings : Feminism and the Cultural
Geographies of Encounter. Princeton, N.J Princeton UP, 1998.
14. Bammer, Angelika, ed. Displacements: Cultural Identities in Question.
Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1994..
15. Castells, Manuel. "An Introduction to the Information Age." The Information
Society Reader. Eds. Frank Webster, Raimo Blom, Erkki Karvonen, Harri Melin,
Kaarle Nordenstreng, and Ensio Puoskari. London and New York: Routledge,
2004. 138-149.
16. Kaplan, Caren, Norma Alarcon and Minoo Moallem, eds. Between Woman and
Nation: Nationalisms, Transnational Feminisms, and the State. Durham: Duke
UP, 1999.
17. Ahmed, Sara, et al, eds. Uprootings/Regroundings: Questions of Home and
Migration.
18. Braziel, Jana Evans, and Anita Mannur, eds. Theorizing Diaspora: A Reader.
Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003.
19. Brah, Avtar. “Refiguring the ‘Multi’: the politics of difference, commonality
and universalism.” Cartographies of Diaspora Contesting Identities. NY:
Routledge, 1996.