Dislocalism: Travel, Globalization, and the Production Op Knowledge
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
DISLOCALISM: TRAVEL, GLOBALIZATION, AND THE PRODUCTION OP KNOWLEDGE By SARIKA CHANDRA A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIALL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2003 Copyright 2003 By Sarika Chandra TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT v INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1 GLOBALIZATION AND DISCIPLINARY PRACTICES 12 New World Order? 12 Dislocalism 17 Disciplinary Practices 23 2 (IM)MIGRATION: PRODUCING A NATIONALIST LITERATURE IN THE “AGE OF GLOBALIZATION” 53 Survival of Nationalist Paradigms 53 Immigration as a Dislocalizing Concept 57 Dislocalist Practices in Literary Criticism 76 Julia Alvarez’s How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents 77 Jessica Hagedorn’s Dogeaters 95 Esmeralda Santiago’s When I was Puerto Rican and America 's Dream 116 Conclusion 133 3 RE-DRAWING THE BOUNDARIES: AMERICAN TRAVEL WRITING 135 The End of Travel? 135 Robert Kaplan: “Actual” Travels and First Hand Accounts 146 Mary Morris: Interruption of Domesticity 159 Paul Theroux: The Politics of Fiction 171 Conclusion 185 4 TOURISM THROUGH FOOD 186 The End(s) of Authenticity 192 Filling the Gap or Narrating the Nation 199 Fusion: Food & Wine 218 The End(s) of Cuisine and A Cook’s Tour 236 Conclusion 249 iii 5 CONCLUSION 250 REFERENCES 257 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 274 IV Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy DISLOCALISM: TRAVEL, GLOBALIZATION, AND THE PRODUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE By Sarika Chandra December 2003 Chair: Susan Hegeman Major Department: English This dissertation takes a critical look at how scholarship in American literature, especially ethnic, literary and cultural studies, contends with the idea of globalization. I address what it means to articulate nationally, regionally, ethnieally, and racially distinctive American practices and identities in the context of globalization and Americanization. According to the conventional view, globalization has ushered in a new “global” reality that requires everyone, on pain of becoming obsolete, to catch up and adapt. In the case of literary and cultural criticism, this new “global” anxiety has produeed what appear to be sweeping changes in both the underlying conceptions of, and the disciplinary approaches to, an “American” literary and cultural corpus, and has given rise to paradigms emphasizing transnational “border crossing” and “migrancy.” But are these changes as sweeping as they seem? My dissertation examines responses to globalization in genres such as American immigrant literary studies, travel writing, and tourist narratives. For instance, I look at the conjunction of literary texts by eontemporary V writers such as Julia Alvarez, Jessica Hagedorn, and Paul Theroux with new genres of scholarship and pedagogy in order to uncover the way that nationalist paradigms persist in the face of globalization. I am particularly attentive to the process whereby such genres, rather than merely responding to forces of globalization, also participate in its production—for, I argue, globalization is as much a discourse as it is a set of historical processes. I call this discourse “globalism.” I am also interested in the drive to shore up existing and traditional disciplinary boundaries within American literary studies in response to the anxieties produced by globalization. By deploying a strategy I refer to as “dislocalism,” literary authors, critics, and cultural producers both displace and consolidate their practices so that older institutional practices are not entirely displaced or rendered useless in the context of globalization. Finally, I show that in the context of globalization, American immigrant literary studies, travel writing, and tourist narratives become sites for the containment of ethnicity and diversity within U.S. borders, thus securing the U.S. as a place that is both local and global. VI INTRODUCTION I started undergraduate school with the intention of studying business and pursuing a financially lucrative career, so when a small business school in Massachusetts with an impressive job placement rate of about 95% came up with an equally impressive financial package, I didn’t hesitate to accept. But after about a year or so, I found myself gravitating towards literary studies, in part because the English department seemed to be the only space within which it was possible to critique both the disciplines and the general atmosphere of college, as well as to question the very social and economic premises for studying accounting, finance, management, and so forth. But despite this openness to critique, everyone in English seemed also to be tacitly agreed that, given the tight job market, it was not in the best interest of the discipline of English or that of students that they be encouraged to study literature. So I joined a combined BA/MBA program, pursuing English as an undergraduate major and deferring business for graduate school. Ten years ago when I commenced my studies for the MBA degree, the program was going through a rapid restructuring, moving from theoretically Keynesian-based disciplinary studies of management, marketing, finance and accounting to a more globally oriented model that was interdisciplinary, creating formations such as international business— in which courses like management theory would be taught by faculty from many different disciplines—complete with an aggressive renewal of study abroad courses. The role of the humanities as a service to business disciplines became 2 even more pronounced and went beyond departments such as English and modern languages with the idea of helping the students accumulate the communication and writing skills needed for entrepreneurship. The rhetoric of learning about “other” cultures and acquiring “other” languages was being vigorously emphasized in the wake of an increasingly interlinked economy. The administration asked the humanities and social science departments to provide such learning and yet at the same time kept such departments from expanding with the excuse that recruiting more humanities/social sciences students would make the college lose its identity and its niche as an appealing school for business students. Though a few people in the English department had moved into teaching graduate courses in managerial communication or technical writing, I still had a sense that the English department was a place of critique and a refuge from business ideology. Going through the MBA program—all the while contesting assignments, refuting questions and challenging ideology-it became clear to me that I needed to seek out and stay within this refuge. So when I finally left my college for graduate study in English, I gleefully gave away or threw away my business textbooks, thinking that I would never look back. For a while, in my pursuit of English graduate degrees at larger universities, where members of English departments did not necessarily have to engage with the rhetoric of business on a daily basis, I found in courses on American literature, film, and ethnic studies a still safer refuge from within which to carry out critical inquiry—sometimes directed at corporate interests—together with like-minded people. But when I began the work of conceiving this project a couple of years ago, it became clear to me that I could not finally leave behind thinking about the kinds of 3 discourse produced by the business departments. The attention to “globalization” had by now become so pervasive that not only had the business departments done the work of shifting their field imaginary but literary/cultural critics had been busy shifting their own fields in relationship to globalization as well. Globalization has now fully emerged as a subject of many significant academic studies. Recent publications such as Spaces of Hope (2000) by David Harvey and Cultures of Globalization (1998), edited by Fredric Jameson and Masao Miyoshi have attracted considerable attention for attempting to define the processes of globalization. These studies from Marxist scholars emphasize that globalizing forces increase the unevenness in the way capital spreads and retracts itself across the world. Writing from a position of realpolitik, other writers, such as Fernando Henrique Cardoso (Charting a New Course: The Politics of Globalization and Social Transformation, 2001), and Robert Reich (The Work of Nations: Preparing Ourselves for Twenty-first Century Capitalism, 1991), present globalization as a new and inevitable condition that requires participation from everyone. Consequently they help generate the impression that in this new era older practices are becoming obsolete. They also help to produce anxiety by suggesting that entire institutions can be rendered ineffective if they do not produce work useful in the context of globalization. Such theories have made it increasingly difficult to ignore the questions of politics, economics, finance, and information technology in the “culture disciplines” such as English, history, and anthropology. Given this turn in literary/cultural studies, my questions in this critical study become the following ones: Does the prominent position of economics and technology in the discourse of globalization necessarily mean that members of those disciplines that — 4 understand the workings of finance capitalism, internet technology, and investment are the principal actors, or interpreters? Are those in other disciplines simply