What We Know We Don’t Know When Jumping on the Wagon of Transnationalism: What the Transnational Turn Entails in Literary Studies?

Abstract

It has been trumpeted out that the narrowly focused attention on a single national literature and inattentiveness to its relationship to other literatures are not tenable any more. The recognition of the peculiarly entangled web of border-crossing relationships to other literatures leads to a correspondingly wide variety of critical practices to capture a diverse and hybrid literary dynamics. As such, the “transnational turn” has been instrumental in honing new interpretative practices that are not only expansive but also flexible enough to locate a literature in relation to other national traditions and within a global context. Nonetheless, it remains to be seen whether it is still premature to jump on the bandwagon called transnationalism, given that there is a discrepancy between what transnationalism claims to do and what it actually performs in redefining the parameters of literary studies. Such discrepancy becomes prominent when it comes to transnational studies’ contingencies vis-à-vis the dominant American culture and the US-centered globalization. It is a legitimate concern because the very prefix “trans” in transnationalism more often than not creates the illusion of a move beyond when there has been no such movement in actuality. This article thus examines what the transnational turn entails in literary studies in general and Irish literary studies in particular. 이 논문은 트랜스내셔널 선회가 문학연구에 가져온 영향을 검토한다. 국가의 경계를 넘어 다양한 교차의 흔적들을 추적하는 작업은 국민문학의 범주를 넘 어서는 개별 문학의 진면목을 발견할 수 있게 해준다. 그러나 동시에 이것은 여전히 강고한 민족주의의 영향력과 주변부 문학의 활력과 개별적 특성이라는 문제를 어떻게 풀 것인가 하는 숙제를 남긴다. 이러한 문제의식을 가지고 이 논문은 트랜스내셔널 선 회를 문학연구에 수용함에 있어 발생하는 새로운 가능성과 한계를 동시에 검토한다.