Translating Nations

Translating Nations shows how approaches to postcolonial theory cross traditional disciplinary boundaries and demand their reinterpretation. Issues addressed in this publication of multicultural studies include the destabilized relationship between cultural centres and margins ; the challenge to history writing posed by the rejection of grand narratives ; and, now that the violence of earlier cultural identifications has been perceived, the possibilities that exist to reconsider the formation of nationhood and the constitution of the state. In An intimate violence - crossing borders, making poems , Meena Alexander, who was born in India but now lives in the United States, investigates the questions of language and embodiment in our racialized and gender-defined world. She uses her prose and poetry to describe her own experiences of migration and discrimination and the emotions they have engendered. Graham MacPhee, in his essay, Europe and violence - some contemporary reflections on Walter Benjamin’s theories of German fascism uses Benjamin’s work to illustrate how the modern nation-state has its underpinnings in enlightment conceptions of right, freedom an violence, but since these underpinning are now radically changed, the question is how these new conditions reformulate the parameters of the nation and whether this might rearticulate its promise, its danger and its ambivalence.