Globalization, desire, and the politics of representation

Comparative Literature, Fall 2001 by Radhakrishnan, R

THAT IS THE ATTRACTION of globality, and why is its rhetoric so seductively irresisistible? What is the nature of its authority? Let me begin by suggesting that the triumphalism of globality has to do with the fact that it seems to emanate from reality itself even as it speaks persuasively for that reality. As a fait accompli, globality presents itself both as reality and as a representation of that reality, all within a unified temporality. It is as though the very essence of reality were global, and, therefore, any attempt at interrogating globality would be nothing short of discrediting reality itself. But how did reality get globalized so absolutely and normatively, and by what process did the space between reality and representation get closed up and claimed in the name of globality? Part of my purpose in this essay is to put some pressure, historical as well as theoretical, on the ideological structuration of globality, and to examine how such a profoundly uneven and relational category gets spoken for as though it were a thing, an essence, an incontrovertible property of reality itself. Consequently my focus in the following discussion will be on the tensions between globality as perspective and globality as content, globality as uni-polar and globality as multi-polar, and globality as process and globality as realized vision and product.

Fredric Jameson begins his essay "Notes on Globalization as a Philosophical Issue" with a schematic account of the phenomenon of globalization: Four positions on our topic seem logically available. The first affirms the opinion that there is no such thing as globalization (there are still the nation-states and the national situations; nothing is new under the sun). The second also affirms that globalization is nothing new; there has always been globalization and it suffices to leaf through a book like Eric Woolf's Europe and the People without History to see that as far back as the neolithic trade routes have been global in their scope, with Polynesian artifacts deposited in Africa and Asian potsherds as far afield as the New World.

Then I suppose one should add two more: one that affirms the relationship between globalization and that world market which is the ultimate horizon of capitalism, only to add that the current world networks are only different in degree and not in kind; while a fourth affirmation (which I have found more interesting than the other three) posits some new, or third, multinational stage of capitalism, of which globalization is an intrinsic feature and which we now largely tend, whether we like it or not, to associate with that thing called postmodernity, (54)

I do not intend to examine all four scenarios or offer an opinion on the classification itself. My focus will be on the "first position," which, according to Jameson, asserts that as long as nations and nation-states continue to exist and exert hegemonk influence on geopolitical circumstances, globality and globalization are at best an ideological illusion. I would like to suggest on the contrary that there is indeed no contradiction between the logic of globalization and the self-interest of dominanant nationalisms and nation-states. Just as notions of trans- and inter-nationalism are posited not on the basis of any critical negation of and/or divestment from the ideology of nationalism, but rather on the basis of a supranationalism that holds on to and consolidates the privileges and prerogatives of dominant nationalism, so, too, globalization extends the regime of uneven development between developed and developing nations (see Balibar and Wallerstein). Noam Chomsky drives this point home with great polemical verve: Putting the details aside, it seems fairly clear that one reason for the sharp divide between today's first and third worlds is that much of the latter was subjected to "experiments" that rammed free market down their throats, whereas today's developed countries were able to resist such measures.

That brings us to another feature of modern history that is hard to miss, in this case at the ideological level. Free market doctrine comes in two varieties. The first is the official doctrine that is taught to and by the educated classes and imposed on the defenseless. The second is what we might call "really existing free market doctrine": For thee, but not for me, except for temporary advantage: I need the protection of the nanny state, but you must learn responsibility under the harsh regimen of "tough love. ("Free Trade and Free Market" 361)

Rather than posit globality and nationalism as adversarial projects, I maintain that globalization takes the form of the dismantling of subaltern nationalisms by developed nationalisms. Globality and globalization are the Darwinian manifesto of the survival of the fittest: the strong nations will survive "naturally," for it is in their destiny to survive as nameless and unmarked nations, whereas weak nations will inevitably be weeded out because of their unsatisfactory performance as nation-states. In other words, the strong nations will have earned the ethico-- political authority to deconstruct the sovereignty of Third-World national rights precisely because these fully developed nations have succeeded in actualizing this form of sovereignty. The developing nations, on the other hand, will be blamed for their inability to secure this sovereignty on their own behalf, and, furthermore, they will be blamed and penalized if they raise the flag of subaltern national sovereignty in revolt against the standard of dominant national sovereignty. Globality is indeed the name of that ideological structuration that seeks once and for all to realize "the world" as a worthy trophy to be held aloft by some nation-states on behalf of all.