TRANSNATIONALISM, ACTIVISM, ART This page intentionally left blank Transnationalism, Activism, Art EDITED BY KIT DOBSON AND ÁINE MCGLYNN UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London © University of Toronto Press 2013 Toronto Buffalo London www.utppublishing.com Printed in Canada ISBN 978-1-4426-4319-2 Printed on acid-free, 100% post-consumer recycled paper with vegetable-based inks. Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Transnationalism, activism, art / edited by Kit Dobson and Áine McGlynn. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-1-4426-4319-2 1. Transnationalism. 2. Social movements. 3. Arts, Modern – 21st century. 4. Arts and globalization. 5. World politics – 21st century. I. Dobson, Kit, 1979– II. McGlynn, Áine HM1271.T73 2013 305 C2012-904202-1 The University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP). Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction: Transnationalism, Activism, Art 3 kit dobson and áine mcglynn 1 Manhattanism and Future Cities: Some Provocations on Art and New Urban Forms 19 imre szeman 2 Mumbai, Slumbai: Transnationalism and Postcolonialism in Urban Slums 29 kelly minerva 3 Ends of Culture 54 jeff derksen 4 Transnational Culture: An Interview with Graham Huggan 80 sam knowles 5 The Translegality of Digital Nonspace: Digital Counter-Power and Its Representation 91 nick morwood 6 Queers without Borders? On the Impossibilities of ‘Queer Citizenship’ and the Promise of Transnational Aesthetic Mutiny 117 melissa autumn white vi Contents 7 Outernational Transmission: The Politics of Activism in Electronic Dance Music 135 prasad bidaye 8 Transnational Indigenous Feminism: An Interview with Lee Maracle 162 chantal fiola 9 This Is What Democracy Looks Like? or, The Art of Opposition 171 kirsty robertson 10 Transnationalizing the Rhythm / Remastering the National Dance: The Politics of Black Performance in Contemporary Cinema of the Americas 192 deonne n. minto 11 Author as Metabrand in the Postcolonial UK: Booking Daljit Nagra 209 sarah brouillette Afterword: Sentiment or Action 227 rinaldo walcott Contributors 239 Acknowledgments We would like to begin by thanking the University of Toronto Press, and in particular Siobhan McMenemy, for working with us on this book. The anonymous readers of the manuscript helped a great deal to improve its final form. Additionally, the University of Toronto’s Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies deserves profound thanks for sponsoring the conference that led to this book; as do the university’s departments of English, Canadian Studies, Sociology and Equity Studies in Education, and Equity Studies; and as do the Women and Gender Studies Institute, the Graduate Students’ Union, the Graduate English Association, the Faculty of Social Work, the Principal of University College, the Dean’s Student Initiative Fund, and the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Local 3902. Kit would like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for both doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships, as well as the Killam Trusts for a postdoctoral fellowship held during the produc- tion of this book. He would also like to thank his colleagues and friends at Mount Royal University – and across the time zones. People who have contributed in significant ways – whether they know it or not – to the de- velopment of this book include Archana Rampure, Allison Burgess, Gala Arh, Arti Mehta, Smaro Kamboureli, Linda Hutcheon, Daniel Heath Justice, Heather Murray, Len Findlay, Carrie Dawson, and Dean Irvine. Finally, thanks to his family: his partner Aubrey, daughters Alexandra and Clementine, parents Debbie and Keith, sister Beth and her partner Simon, and in-laws Patti, Paul, Bruce, Jesse, Dan, Ambrose, and Wynn. Support from community and friends is ultimately what makes a project like this one possible. Finally, Kit would like to acknowledge his cats Jack and Shelby, who were omitted from previous book acknowledgments. viii Acknowledgments Áine would like to thank the Ontario Graduate Scholarship fund for its support while this book was being written. In addition, she is grateful to the Viola Whitney Pratt Scholarship Fund. The University of Toronto provided Áine with a wealth of mentors as this book was being assem- bled, chief among them Neil Ten Kortenaar and Ato Quayson, whose encouragements landed on grateful ears. Esther DeBruijn and Cynthia Quarrie also deserve heartfelt thanks for sharing endless cups of tea over deep conversations about the writing and thinking life. Patient, loving support from partner Beth and sisters Grainne, Claire, Roisin, and Molly deserves the lion’s share of credit, for it is only as a labour of love that one embarks upon these projects at all. Áine dedicates this work to the memory of her mother, whose grace and deep compassion was the first work of art she ever loved. Finally, we would like to thank our contributors, whose excellent work throughout this volume stands for itself. Thank you. TRANSNATIONALISM, ACTIVISM, ART This page intentionally left blank Introduction: Transnationalism, Activism, Art KIT DOBSON AND ÁINE M C GLYNN It’s useless to wait – for a breakthrough, for the revolution, the nuclear apoca- lypse or a social movement. To go on waiting is madness. The catastrophe is not coming, it is here. We are already situated within the collapse of a civilization. It is within this reality that we must choose sides. The Invisible Committee, The Coming Insurrection1 So assert the authors of The Coming Insurrection, a pamphlet published initially in France in 2007 and translated into English in 2009. It is linked, in France, to a lawsuit against a small commune whose members have been charged with terrorism. Sloganeering aside, the pamphlet condemns the ills of the early twenty-first century through a rhetoric that can be linked to Italian autonomism and anarcho-primitivism, among other movements. On a parallel tangent, Slavoj Žižek has recently sug- gested that ‘the global capitalist system is approaching an apocalyptic zero-point,’ signalled by ecological crisis, economic upheavals, biogene- tic engineering, and huge social divisions on a global scale.2 What does it mean to live within the collapse of civilization? As the globalizing world veers from one moment of crisis to the next – think of the Asian tsunami, the earthquakes in Haiti and Japan, political revolts in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and elsewhere, not to mention ongoing military action in Iraq and Afghanistan – what can our responses be? Transnationalism, Activism, Art emerges from these and similar ques- tions. For us, as editors, these terms came together organically. The con- fluence began with a series of discussions held through the Transnational Reading Group at the University of Toronto, under the direction of Ato Quayson at the University’s Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Stud- 4 Kit Dobson and Áine McGlynn ies. Those discussions were the organizing terms around which we shaped an international conference held at the University of Toronto. Subse- quent discussions with our colleagues suggested to us that there was a widespread interest in pursuing what it means to place these three terms alongside one another. Our concern with how artistic practice and analy- sis coexist with activist or political work in the realm of globalization – or what we identify as the transnational – is shared by the contributors to this book as well as by many of our peers. This concern has been important enough to us to warrant the creation of this book in order to continue the dialogue. Of particular import to us is the desire to advocate for artistic agency at a time when globalizing forces are increasingly calling for eco- nomic rationalizations for creative practices, as we will discuss below. This volume is therefore an exploration of the transnational and its relationships with activism and art. The three terms coalesce in many ways, and disaggregate in others. The global politics of dissidence, since at least the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the end of most socialist state systems by the mid-1990s, have grappled with an economics of neo- liberalism that has claimed triumph over the global sphere. As a result, a politics of left activism has increasingly articulated itself in relationship to what is variously termed globalization, transnationalism, or Empire (for followers of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri). This activism con- nects at times directly and at other times more abstractly with cultural production. Activism has not only its own aesthetics and performances but also its own series of cultural practices – what we might call an art of resistance. This art is practised by specific communities within the trans- national sphere, and it articulates differences that cross and transgress against all sorts of borders. In brief, this is how we understand our three terms to relate to one another. When placed alongside one another, each narrows the others so that no single one can be isolated from the other two without compro- mising this book’s argument that we are living in an era characterized by transnational capital, political unrest, and the economization of cul- tural production and of all art forms. As editors of a volume that brings together three such heady concepts, we therefore offer here a gloss on each term that locates transnationalism, activism, and art in their tem- poral and spatial specificities. That these terms cross and recross one another will become increasingly apparent as the book progresses; while we separate the terms here in order to give the reader a genealogical sense of each, the contributors to this volume take this foundation in a myriad of directions.