The essential contention of this volume is embedded in a long-drawn discussion and debate with scholars spread across the United Kingdom, Poland and Australia. In the conferences organised by Bankura University in collaboration with associations and universities based in UK and Australia, it was possible to recognise the gradual depletion of postcolonial studies in literature departments in the Euro-American academies and the consequent emergence of transnational studies as the new format of a revisionary discourse. Christian Moraru in his article “Re-figuring the Postcolonial: Transnational Challenges” (ARIEL, 28:4. 1997), while noting the exhaustion of postcolonial model, calls for a “theoretical retooling in the wake of socio-cultural and political redeployments of late twentieth century”. In the continuing spate for the overarching postcolonial theoretical production, it finally merged into being another form of foundational discourse which it inceptually contested and challenged.
The post-Cold War era, the gradual rise of Asia in economic and political domains and the stronghold of TNCs and MNCs across the world largely rendered the discourse of empire almost obsolete. It was felt that a new form of cultural conversation was necessary in the context of a global world order. Thieme’s project itself at one point of time tried to inflect on the idea of “transvaluation”. In course of some of our post-conference discussions with academicians from UK and Australia, we thought about doing a new project on “transnationalism”. Critics working on transnationalism try to show how local or regional modernities move into a transnational environment. Dagnino comments that major institutes worldwide promote the study of representation of transnational culture and communities. This confluential nature of culture not only critiques the dichotomous nature of nation-state, but also tries to reshape the so-called national collective imaginaries. This cosmopolitan vision in the age of transnational political, social, economic and cultural processes, ensures that the dominant postcolonial discourses come to be radicalized and disrupted.
This issue of the journal will therefore address the newly emergent and vastly divergent area of transnationalism and transnational literatures and invites articles on the same.
Submission Deadline: 30 November 2019
Email for submission of Abstracts / Full Papers / Queries: lyceumejournal@gmail.com
For submission guidelines and further information please visit www.lyceumejournal.com
