Unveiling Transnationalism in New Diasporic and Migratory Discourses: A PostMarxist Reading of African Art, Films and Virtual Writings

Abstract

This paper deployed post-Marxist insights to investigate transnationalism as a trajectory with very rich openings into new perspectives and fields of study. It is premised on the hypothesis that transnationalism does not function in an island of values, but in settings with multiple identities; it suggests that a new impetus can be given to its development by establishing a dialogue between transnationalism and other key identities and processes in the creation of ‘homeness’. It aimed to chart out the various ideas that emerged from transnationalism over the past decades in novels, films and digital writings. It found out that, while the research agenda of the early stages was marked by a need to distinguish between transnationalisms from related terms, such as globalization,  the field can now regain momentum by exploring synergies with other concepts in order to refocus transnationalism studies on  the unevenness, instability and inequality of diasporic and migratory spaces. Consequently, it staged a number of confrontations between transnationalism and ‘borders’, ‘translocality’, ‘precarity’,  ‘moralities’, ‘the statehood’, and ‘brokerage’. It showed how these ideas raised their own problematics, and issues and how they were deployed. The goal was to facilitate a more productive interpretation of the interface between the local and the global, the national and the diasporic and to shift away from a narrow Eurocentric reading of the term transnationalism that is essentialising. In the past, transnationalism was associated with globalization, migration, cosmopolitanism, multiculturalism, diaspora, post-migration studies, and internationalism. But today, transnationalism is transformative and powerful enough to trigger changes in contemporary societies. This paper demonstrated how transnationalism intersected with new writings in ICTs  and with narratives of return migration.