Getting Over Our Illusion D'optique From Globalization To Mondialisation

ORI GI NAL ARTI CLE
Getting Over Our Illusion dOptique: From

Globalization to Mondialisation (Through
French Rap)
Fabienne Darling-Wolf
Journalism Department and Mass Media and Communication Doctoral Program, School of Communications and
Theater, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA 19122
Keeping in mind the political nature of academic endeavors where intellectual dis-
courses are never insulated from the national and global environment in which they
develop (M. Kraidy, 2005, p. 17), this essay addresses the politics of representation of
globalization in American intellectual discourse through a critical analysis of some of
the common axes on which much academic work is organized. Employing a brief ana-
lysis of the development of French rap as an example, it illustrates how American aca-
demic conceptualization of the world along EastWest or NorthSouth lines fail to
fully address the complexity of transcultural influence and leaves significant power rela-
tions unexplored. As an alternative to such conceptualizations, this essay proposes the
concept of mondialisation adopted by francophone scholars as a strategic translation
of the term globalization. It concludes that because of its greater focus on the socially
constructed and potentially fragmentary nature of global influence, mondialisation
might be better suited for the development of a theoretically sophisticated, empirically
grounded, and truly translocal approach.
doi:10.1111/j.1468-2885.2008.00319.x
The popular press current wave of obsession with Asias economic development
illustrates how forcefully globalization has entered our vernacular. Deeming India
Asias other power house, Newsweek recently celebrated the countrys enthusiastic
embrace of global capitalism with a cover photograph of actress Padma Lakshmi
wearing traditional garb, her shoulders bare, and hands held in a prayer-like gesture
(Zakaria, 2006). U.S. News and World Report similarly described the good life of
Bangalores middle class riding the wave of the citys high-tech industry (Fang,
2006, p. 46) and that of Shanghai ChuppiesChinese yuppiesenjoying frap-
puccinos in 66 citywide locations (Fang, 2006). As Rain, the South Korean face
and muscled torsoof pop globalism (Walsh, 2006) joins President Bush and Pope
Benedict on the Time 100 list, there is little doubt that globalization is here to stay.
Corresponding author: Fabienne Darling-Wolf; email: fdarling@temple.edu
Communication Theory ISSN 1050-3293
Communication Theory 18 (2008) 187209 2008 International Communication Association 187
Those who dare oppose it are portrayed as misguided at best (Goeddertz & Kraidy,
2003).
This popular discourse is matched by academic discussions of similarly impressive
proportionsa recent library search for the keyword globalization produced 2,530
books, 305 of them published in 2006 alone. Although scholars positions on global-
ization are far from homogeneous, scholarly discussions share with more popular
accounts a relative lack of attention to the larger ideological context from which they
emanate. French theorist Jean-Pierre Warnier (2004) argues that contemporary dis-
courses about globalization are victim of an optical illusion as local ideologies (and
politics) frame understandings of the global. This illusion doptique is generated by
scholars inability to view processes of global influence outside the limited prism of the
sociocultural environment in which they find themselves immersed. In short, glob-
alization means radically different things to different people in different places (Sorge,
2005, p. 8). Although no individual scholar may be able to grasp the totality of global-
izations extreme complexity, the rst step toward sharpening our vision lies in crit-
ically considering our most disturbing blind spots. It is with this goal in mind that this
essay rst turns to the politics of representation of globalization in academic endeavors
where intellectual discourses are never insulated from the national and global envir-
onment in which they develop (Kraidy, 2005, p. 17).
Motivated by my frustrationas a French scholar of the Japanese cultural envi-
ronment working at a large American universitywith the common lines along
which much academic thinking is organized in the United States, this essay focuses
on characterizations of globalization in Anglo-American
1
discourse. This focus is
justied in light of the powerful inuence exerted by Anglo-American scholarship on
the global political economy of intellectual labor and, more specically, on the
culture and economics of international academic publishing (Appadurai, 2001;
Spivak, 1999). Although a detailed examination of the larger context of knowledge
production is beyond the scope of this work, I am keenly aware of the complexity of
the politics of representation in intellectual discourse in general and of the impact of
academic modes of operation on the theory we produce. In his powerful critique of
Orientalism, Said (1978, 1994), for instance, demonstrates the complicity of aca-
demic forms of knowledge with institutions of power. A number of other theorists
have further pointed to this problematic (see, e.g., Ahmad, 1995; Alcoff, 1995;
Spivak, 1988; Young, 1990).
My main concern here does not lie, however, in simply identifying Western or
American biases in the U.S. academy. I believe the presence of such biases has been
well documented and is largely unavoidableas Young (1990) notes, even Said
could not fully extricate himself from the inuence of his cultural heritage. I
endeavor instead to critically assess the specic nature of biases regarding globaliza-
tion and their impact on academic work. I propose to do so by tackling the following
questions: How is globalization characterized in Anglo-American academic rhetoric?
What historical and/or institutional factors might help explain such characteriza-
tion(s)? How do different positions translate into different concerns regarding the
Getting Over Our Illusion dOptique F. Darling-Wolf
188 Communication Theory 18 (2008) 187209 2008 International Communication Association
impact of transcultural exchange and what intellectual discourses are most likely to
be ignored as a consequence of these positions? How might these concerns affect the
overall research process?
I am particularly concerned with the common division of the world along East
West or NorthSouth lines in Anglo-American scholarship, and with the strategic
characterization of what constitutes either side of these axes. Although significant
power relations certainly remain between these broadly defined categories, we might
benefit from the continuing expansion of our theoretical imaginary to include other
possible dynamics and outlooks. It is in this spirit of exploring new avenues of
inquiryrather than replacing old onesthat the critical review of scholarship
constituting the first part of this essay is offered.
The brief analysis of French rap that follows is a means to further theorize the
intersection of the global and the local and illustrate the potential of a more theo-
retically translocal approach, as advocated by Kraidy (2005, p. 155). A second set
of questions arises from this effort: How are (local) social actors positioning them-
selves in relationship to other (global) localities? How are local dynamics inuencing
strategic interpretations of the global? Do local repertoires of irony, anger, humor,
and resistance (Appadurai, 1996, p. 7) emerge in this globally inuenced cultural
production? If so, how are these signicant? In what ways does the production of
local texts intersect with academic and/or political discourses of globalization?
In addressing these two sets of concerns, my goal is not only to tease out some of
the globallocal articulations (Murphy & Kraidy, 2003, p. 310) of transnational
cultural dynamics but also to contribute to the development of theories of trans-
cultural inuence that more honestly acknowledge and more assertively address the
inuence of the local framework(s) in which discourses about the global are pro-
duced and disseminated. But before I more specically turn to these questions, let me
briey outline the key theoretical points of Anglo-American globalization scholar-
ship to locate this critique in its proper context.
Theorizing the global
[A] reality that is so large, so multifaceted, so ongoing, and so defiant of conven-
tional categories and methods of analysis that it frustrates social scientific precision
(Croucher, 2004, p. 9), globalization may warrant the attention it has recently
received. Far from unambiguously sharing the medias enthusiasm for the spread
of global capitalism, some scholars stress the remainingif not increasinginequal-
ities that characterize a transcultural consumer culture in which poor nations are
enticed to participate under false and misleading promises (Le Maswood, 2006,
p. 176; for recent examples, see Bamyeth, 2000; Burnham, 2002; Isaak, 2005; Woods,
2000). They point to the increased concentration of global media production in the
hands of powerful corporations from the richest nations (Herman & McChesney,
1997; McPhail, 2002) and to the inauthentic and alienating nature of the commod-
ied culture they distribute around the globe in the form of identity fetishisms
F. Darling-Wolf Getting Over Our Illusion dOptique
(Tehranian, 1999, p. 7; see also Halnon, 2006; Langman & Kalekin-Fishman, 2006;
Schiller, 1976, 1993). They, in other words, warn against uncritically celebrating
a global village where the richest get richer at the expense of those not fortunate
enough to have merged onto the information highway when the trafc was uid.
Others, while recognizing that global flows are increasingly multilateral and
decentralized (Mattelart & Mattelart, 1984; Sreberny-Mohammadi, 1996) point to
the persistence of an American conception of the world (Hall, 1997, p. 33) in
global media production still largely dominated by American texts (Giddens, 1990;
Street, 1997). In doing so, these scholars powerfully address globalizations compli-
city with American-style capitalism (Agnew, 2005). They recognize that even as
products are adapted to local markets and non-Americans allowed to participate
in global production, the dominant ideology behind the development of a globalized
cultural arena remains one of American-inuenced extreme free-market economy
(tinted by such concepts as the worship of individualism and unrestrained consump-
tion). The focal point of political economy, however, also leaves a number of blind
spots largely unexamined.
The insertion of the local into the global, for instance, significantly complicates
the picture of American domination. As Tomlinson (1999a) contends: For all the
superficial signs of cultural convergence that might be identified, the threat of a more
profound homogenization of culture can only be deduced by ignoring the complex-
ity, reflexivity, and sheer recalcitrance of actual, particular cultural responses to
modernity (p. 97; see also Crane, 2002; Curren & Park, 2000; Featherstone,
1991). In this view, rather than being thoroughly penetrated (Giddens, 1999,
p. 19) by the global, local agents actively engage in a complex process of transcultural
reinterpretation through which they translate, mutate, and indigenize cultural
imports (Tomlinson, 1999a, p. 84). Recognizing the role of local agency in negoti-
ating global inuence adds a new dimensionoften (dis)missed by political econ-
omy scholarsto the understanding of transcultural relationships. As local identities
and hybrid cultural forms are fashioned in relationshipand even oppositionto
the global through involvement with increasingly abstract and deterritorialized
imagined communities (Anderson, 1983; Anderson & Kingsley, 1999; Kraidy,
2005; Niezen, 2004), the globallocal nexus becomes a site of simultaneous resistance
and domination. The concepts of glocalization, delocalization, and disjuncture(s) are
all attempts to theorize this crucial tension. For instance, when characterizing glob-
alization as a world of disjunctive flows that produce problems that manifest
themselves in intensely local forms but have contexts that are anything but local,
Appadurai (2001, p. 6) paints a more complex picture of a world in which power
relations remain but are enacted on multiple interlocking axes and negotiated in
complex and often unpredictable ways.
Recognizing the power of globally produced and distributed commodified cul-
tural forms while remaining sensitive to local agency is, however, a difficult task.
Scholars studying the local reception of global textsoften employing ethnographic
methods that encourage close relationships with local agentsmight at times lose
sight of the larger context of production (Meehan, 2000). By focusing attention on
globallocal articulation(s), the concept of hybridity has emerged as a useful theo-
retical tool to help theorists keep this context in mind (Bhabba, 1994; Garc a-
Canclini, 1995; Joseph, 1999; Pieterse, 1994). A much critiqued and sometimes
uncomfortably polysemic notiona full analysis of which is beyond the scope of
this essay (for a more thorough review, see Kraidy, 2002, 2005)hybridity is most
useful when conceptualized as neither a sign of empowerment nor a symptom of
dominance but as a historically, politically, and geographically grounded process of
cultural negotiation that is globally influenced and locally manifested. In other
words, the theoretical value of hybridity lies in its potential to bridge the gap between
depressed analyses of global political economy and celebratory accounts of local
resistance. While the concept shares with that of globalization the risk of being
strategically enlisted to the service of free-market practices intent on justifying the
spread of commodified cultural forms from powerful nations (Ahmad, 1995; Kraidy,
2002, 2005; Mattelart, 2005a; Murphy, 2003), and while its problematic origins in
colonial discourse must be acknowledged (Stoler, 2000; Young, 2000), empirically
grounded and carefully located conceptualizations of hybridity can help move the-
oretical formulations of transcultural inuence forward.
Kraidy (2005) suggests a contrapuntal approach in which notions of media
dominance and audience activity are conceived as mutually complementary rather
than exclusive (p. 13). Coombes and Brah (2000) similarly propose that we fore-
ground the way in which hybridity is constituted and contested through complex
hierarchies of power (p. 2; see also Kraniauskas, 2000). In other words, rather than
conceptualizing globalization in terms of global power versus local resistance, we
must tease out the multiple ways in which global power and local resistance are
mutually constitutive. I contend, however, that the possibility of developing such an
approach rests in part on our ability to address the politics of representation
of globalization foregrounded at the beginning of this essay and to which I now
return.
Americas illusion doptique: Deconstructing the EastWest
(or NorthSouth) dynamic
Two significant and problematic organizing principles of academic considerations of
transcultural influence in the United States are found in the common divisions along
EastWest and NorthSouth lines. The historical and institutional origins of these
theoretical maps, which Appadurai (2001) characterizes as problematic heuristic
devices (p. 8), are numerous and complex, but the most obvious ones include
(a) the disciplinary division into area studies that scholars must t into if they
are to receive funding (Appadurai, 2001) and the complex identity politics arising
from this division (see, e.g., Bow, 1995), (b) the inuence of postcolonial theory on
studies of globalization (Kraidy, 2005), and (c) the inuence of the 1970s debates
regarding the New World CommunicationInformation Order, which led to a (tem-
porary) shift in focus from EastWest to NorthSouth dynamics (Mowlana, 1986).
Today, these two dividing lines are often used interchangeably. For instance, in
Grassroots Globalization and the Research Imagination, Appadurai (2001) speaks in
the same paragraph of the cultural wars of the Western academic world and the
theory mill of the North (p. 5).
By the same token, the West and America (and, sometimes, Britain) are
frequently merged in the discourse of Anglo-American scholars. In a recent book on
global journalism, American scholar Hatchen (2005) connes his descriptions of
Western media to those of American and British texts. His list of Western networks
is similarly limited to those of the United States and Britain: ABC, NBC, CBS, and the
BBC. In a chapter titled Global Impact of American Media, he frequently uses the
terms American and Western interchangeably, as when he states: The pervasiveness
of entertainment in Western media has become a controversial issue and often the
target of anti-American sentiments (p. 21, emphasis mine). This essentializing
merging does violence to the signicant sociocultural differences that remain
between the United States and Europe, in general, and non-English speaking Europe,
in particular. It also conveniently glosses over differences and tensions within
regions.
Tomlinsons (1999b) otherwise powerful critique of pessimistic interpretations
of globalization as a homogenizing process of Westernization similarly fails to fully
problematize the concept of the West. Although he recognizes that various ele-
ments of Western culture do not constitute an indivisible package (p. 168), the
elements he describe are all drawn from Anglo-American cultureMcDonalds,
Coca-Cola, Levi Jeans, Sesame Street. Ultimately, his argument remains organized
along Western and non-Western lines, as when he speaks of the cultural resil-
ience and dynamism of non-Western cultures and of their capacity to indigenise
Western cultural imports (p. 169). Similarly, what Appadurai (2001) describes, in
the essay mentioned above, as the works and experiences of Western scholars reects
more closely the works and experiences of American scholars than that of those
operating in Western environments outside the United States and, possibly, Britain.
His argument, for instance, that every branch of the university system in the
West . must demonstrate their foundation in research in order to command
serious public attention or funds (p. 8) might not apply to European scholars
who work at nationally funded universities. His description of public intellectuals
who routinely address nonprofessionals publics as the product of non-Western
environments suffers from a similar bias. Although theorists in the United States may
shun the popular press, it is not unusual to see Bernard Henry-Levy or Claude Levi-
Strauss express their opinions in the pages of Le Monde or Le Nouvel Observateur, as
did Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, or Roland Barthes before their deaths.
2
I am
not pointing to these inaccuracies in the works of two of the most highly theoretically
sophisticated thinkers on globalization to dismiss them but to illustrate how difcult
it is to avoid slipping into essentializing characterizationsa slippage I myself have
been guilty of. If broad categories are necessary heuristic devices, deconstructing
them is equally valuable.
Merging American experience, politics, ideology, and/or culture with that of
other Western cultural environments obscures the presence of other modes of
organization, knowledge production, and distribution as valid Western alternatives.
By denying the availability of such alternatives, this merging further helps construct
American-style consumerism and politics as the only valid route to a better life for
less developed (non-Western) nationsthat is, as the only possible form of
modernity. This, in turn, may be used to conceal the role of American political
and economic hegemony in processes of globalization by suggesting that rather than
being exploited by American ideology, global audiences are simply coming to rec-
ognize its superiority. As Hatchen (1999) puts it in an earlier book on the spread of
Western media to the rest of the world: Most . . . agree that freedom and diversity
are better than government control of mass communications at whatever level
(p. 185). Here, he not only fails to recognize that Western nations greatly vary in
their tolerance for government control of mass communications (in fact, it is
doubtful this statement even applies to the United States) but also succeeds in
dening freedom and diversity as Western values (a point to which I will return
in a moment).
Only defining global dynamics along EastWest lines further serves to move the
spotlight of American academic production away from colonial or neocolonial
power relations falling outside of this divide but worth critically examining. Despite
attempts to deconstruct and complicate the hierarchical dualism of East and West,
postcolonial theory often continues to be couched in binary oppositionsbetween
colonizer and colonized, imperialist and imperialized, Western and non-Western.
For instance, while he at times differentiates between the works of French and British
intellectuals and recognizes some of the dangers of essentialism, Young (1990) still
speaks of Western culture, Western values, Western history, Western knowl-
edge, Western imperialism, or Western assumptions of selfhood in White
Mythologies: Writing History and the West. Mohantys (1991) famous critique of
Western feminists tendency to construct Third World women as a homogeneous
group is similarly trapped in broad dichotomies.
3
Although it is certainly useful to
address the historical legacy of colonialism, the continuing reliance on such oppo-
sitions is problematic when considering globalization in our contemporary condi-
tion. As Appadurai (1996) aptly recognizes (but does not, to my knowledge,
empirically explore), for the people of Irian Jaya, Indonesianization may be more
worrisome than Americanization, as Japanization may be for Koreas, Indianization
for Sri Lankans, Vietnamization for the Cambodians, and Russianization for the
people of Soviet Armenia and the Baltic republics (p. 32).
Japanese scholar Koichi Iwabuchis prolific work illustrates the value of a differ-
ently situated approach and the problematic (and political) nature of an EastWest
divide in which Japan, as a non-Western economic giant, does not neatly fit. Deem-
ing Japans hybridity an act of strategic hybridism (Iwabuchi, 2002, p. 53), he
argues that the celebration of Japanese cultures ability to absorb foreign inuence
not only reinforces essentializing constructions of both Japanese and Western
identity but also helps to (re)assert Japans cultural power over its Asian neighbors as
claims of cultural proximity make Japanese exports palatable on the Asian market.
Warning that Japans condescending sense of being the leader of Asia and the
asymmetrical power relations between Japan and the rest of Asia are still intact,
he suggests that Japans cultural nationalist project has been recongured within
a transnational and postcolonial framework (Iwabuchi, 2004, p. 15). Numerous
other scholars (operating outside of the U.S. academy) have similarly addressed pan-
Asian power relations (see, e.g., Lee, 2004; Nakano, 2002; Park, 2004; Skov, 2004;
Zheng, 2004). Attention to relationships between nations generally dened as West-
ern might be equally productive, particularly if focused on the strategies through
which these nations compete with each other for global power at the expense of less
powerful nations.
Finally, emphasizing dichotomies between rigidly defined areas of the world
helps disguise the internal consequences of globalization, particularly in relation
to race, gender, and/or class. The works of feminist scholars have usefully pointed
to the need to address the relationship between culture, globalization, national
identity, and gender (see, e.g., Croucher, 2004; Durham, 2001; Enloe, 2004; Para-
meswaran, 2001; Yegenoglu, 1998, 2003). Hybridity might likewise be simulta-
neously articulated at the national, local, and global levels. Stoler (2000) reminds
us, for instance, that in colonial France, Metissage represented not the dangers of
foreign enemies at national borders, but a more pressing affront to the countrys
internal frontiers (p. 20), the legacy of which could be usefully problematized
(see also Croucher, 2004; Hargreaves, 1995). Japans strategic hybridism similarly
feeds the conservative discourse of nihonjinron (theories about the Japanese) on
Japanese racial purity (McVeigh, 2004). Nevertheless, as Coombes and Brah
(2000) note: Few studies explore the internal dynamics of hybridity constituted
across and within social, political, and cultural entities and not exclusively in rela-
tionship to the West (p. 12).
Taking these internal tensions into consideration is particularly important in our
increasingly deterritorialized world where the inequalities of globalization are no
longer tied to specific geographic locations. Thus, although privileged members of
subordinated nations might rise to the level of global elites (Niezen, 2004), sub-
altern members of powerful nations might fall to the level of global poor. Or, as
Mattelart (2005b) puts it: What troubled Manichean representations of the world is
the fact that the North has discovered Souths on its own territory and that, at the very
heart of the South, Norths with their own Souths have emerged (p. 104). Although
Galtung (1971) described relationships between elites in periphery and center nations
as crucial to the maintenance of imperialism (and hinted at the productive potential
of transnational connections between members of different peripheries) more than
35 years ago, these local-to-local transcultural dynamics remain largely unexplored.
Failure to tackle the impact of globalization on Western national and/or local
identities and cultures erases the experiences of subaltern Western subjects from the
map of academic discourse: In glorifying this image [of a stable liberal-capitalist
West], practitioners and researchers have ignored the increasing rates of unemploy-
ment, homelessness, poverty, illiteracy, disease and pollution in the developed
world (Dov, 1996, p. 91). Furthermore, in addition to exonerating non-Western
local elites from their share of responsibility in creating inequalities, dichotomized
characterizations of the West and the rest may also serve to justify the spread of
American ideology to other parts of the world by strategically locating racial, gender,
and/or class problems outside of the West and uncritically positioning Western
nations as the champions of equality and justice. Such a discursive strategy is found,
for instance, in the work of American scholar Demers (1999), who in his book titled
Global Media: Menace or Messiah? concludes:
Because global media are creations of Western political and economic systems
and need profits to survive, global media will continue to produce news content
and entertainment programming that generally promote Western values, such as
responsible capitalism, racial and gender equality, representative democracy,
a diversity of ideas, religious tolerance andyesmaterialism and consumerism.
(p. 166, emphasis mine)
To be fair, a number of scholars do recognize the need to broaden our scope of inquiry
beyond rigidly defined and mutually exclusive geopolitical categories, as illustrated by
the calls for more grounded explorations of hybridity. Appadurai (2001) suggests that
we nd out how others, in what we still take to be certain areas as we dene them, see
the world in regional terms and proposes that American scholars invite a conver-
sation with scholars from other societies and traditions of inquiry (p. 8). Kraidy
(2005) advocates a translocal approach (p. 155) focusing on connections between
several local social spaces in order to better address thus far neglected local-to-local
links. Fewscholars, however (aside fromKraidy himself), have moved beyond a merely
theoretical recognition of the need for this paradigm shift. The following sections of
this essay are offered in an effort to move the theoretical debate forward as a tentative
suggestion of what such an approach might look like. I start with the works of
francophone theorists on processes of cultural inuence as a source of inspiration.
Mondialisation: Globalization with a Latin twist
When marveling at the fact that even in France, where sensitivity to alleged Amer-
ican bullying and cultural arrogance may be stronger than anywhere, Hollywood
movies continue to account for 50 percent to 70 percent of French box office receipts
every year, Hatchen (2005, p. 21) illustrates the common characterization among
Anglo-American scholars of Frances cultural protectionismand, by the same
token, that of other nations similarly concerned with American influenceas mis-
placed, conceited, and ultimately counterproductive. It is certainly true that Frances
cultural policy, at least since the beginning of the 1980s, has been directed at protect-
ing French cultural productions and resisting aspects of globalization. Doing so was
a stated goal of Franc xois Mitterands socialist government, particularly under the
leadership of Minister of Culture Jacques Lang (Street, 1997). More recently, France
was one of the leaders in the successful battle against the United States for the
inclusion of a cultural exception clause in the 1993 GATT agreements, aimed at
protecting cultural products from the free-market economy and allowing national
governments to subsidize their cultural industries (Matouk, 2005).
4
This concern for the protection of French culture in the face of (mostly)
American influence is reflected in the works of French theorists of globalization,
who, while joining their Anglo-American colleagues in recognizing the increasingly
multilateral, hybrid, and complex nature of global cultural flows, differ from the
former in the amount of attention they pay to the FranceEuropeU.S. axis. As
Warnier (2004) posits, if traditional cultures [cultures de la tradition] are threat-
ened by more powerful global cultures arent European industrial cultures also
threatened by the American superpower? (p. 89). Thus, although certainly acknowl-
edging the historical legacy of EastWest and NorthSouth dynamics, French intel-
lectuals
5
further locate their work in the context of power struggles enacted at the
national level in relationship to both the United States and, to a lesser extent, the rest
of Europe (see, e.g., Matouk, 2005, Mattelart, 2005a, 2005b; Warnier, 2004).
This different positioning has resulted in a characterization of globalization
subtlybut, I contend, significantlydifferent from that found in the works of
American scholars. The impetus to construct an alternative perspective is reflected
in the choice of the term of Latin origin mondialisation over the more direct
English translation, globalization, to describe the generalized interconnection of
economies and societies (Mattelart, 2005a, p. 3). More than a simple reaction
against another anglicisme (even though certainly partly that), this strategic trans-
lation usefully complicates the politics of representation of transcultural inuence.
As a Western alternative to the Anglo-American concept of globalization, mondial-
isation helps deconstruct essentializing characterizations of the West. By linguis-
tically and (as I will soon discuss) conceptually separating francophone scholars from
their anglophone counterparts, it reminds us of the diversity of Western perspectives
and of the problematic nature of academic heuristic devices built on the uncritical
merging of broad areas of the world. The term further links the work of francophone
scholars to that of Latin American intellectuals who have similarly opted for the term
mundializacion in their own translation of globalization. In doing so, the twin con-
cepts of mondialisationmundializacion also interestingly disrupt the NorthSouth
dichotomy. These strategic linguistic choices may in part be understood as acts
of resistance against Anglo-American power to define the terms through which
transcultural influence is understood and discussed in intellectual discourse. They
certainly serve to significantly complicate our current vision of the world.
Indeed, French theorist Matouk (2005) argues that the choice of the term monde
as a translation for globe broadens our understanding of transcultural exchange by
placing greater emphasis on the socially constructed and potentially fragmentary
nature of the phenomenon. As he explains, mondialisation not only suggests the
progressive creation of a world [monde] in a social sense (Matouk, 2005, p. 4)
but also leaves open the possibility that different and discrete (plural) worlds might
simultaneously emerge and coexist through the process of negotiation of trans-
cultural inuence. In other words, mondialisation offers the possibility of con-
ceptualizing the global sphere as a collection of locally connected, cross-cutting
sociocultural arenas intersecting with nation-states and national cultures in multiple
and uid ways and engaged in relationships of differential power.
6
Although tightly
interconnected, the different social worlds arising from the process of mondialisa-
tion retain their distinctive sociocultural identity and might even compete to pro-
mote their interpretation of contemporary reality. The term altermondialisme that is
used to refer in French to what in English is characterized as antiglobalization
further illustrates the key philosophical differences between globalization and mon-
dialisation. Rather than negatively dening the movement as an oppositional posi-
tion, it (literally) recognizes it as a valid alternative. The result is a discourse more
open to stances critical of extreme free-market capitalist positions and more attuned
to the presence of alternative (and potentially competing) perspectivesa discourse
that more closely mirrors the complex intricacies of our hybridized present condi-
tion than is suggested in the more geographically tied model of globalization and its
remaining underlying subtext of homogenization.
Such a conceptualization informs the following analysis of French rap as one site
on which the proliferation of cross-cutting interests and boundaries (Street, 1997,
p. 89) in globalized cultural production is particularly striking. My aim is to, rst,
outline the sheer complexity of processes of hybridized glocalization through
which culture, race, and/or national identity are negotiated, contested, and (re)con-
structed. My second goal is to illustrate the value of a momentary shift in our angle of
vision toward a perspective more sensitively attuned to the power struggles taking
place within and between Western nations.
French rap: Disjuncture and difference in the Paris Banlieue
The music industry has been identified as a productive site for the formation of
hybrid cultural forms marked by both cultural exchange and commodification, yet
not easily reduced to either (Coombes & Brah, 2000; Feld, 2001; Gilroy, 1993;
Halnon, 2006). Indeed, speaking of hip-hops hybridity is somewhat pleonastic.
Mixing in hip-hop happens on multiple levels, especially when the worldwide reper-
cussions and diverse cultural origins of the genre are taken into account. Its multi-
layered integration of global and local elements, its complex articulation of racial,
ethnic, gendered, cultural, and/or national identities have inspired much research
(see, e.g., Condry, 2000, 2001; Hesmondhalgh & Melville, 2001; Levy, 2001; Pennay,
2001; Swedenburg, 2001; Urla, 2001). The cultural trajectory of hip-hop in France
thus in many respects follows a familiar pattern. Introduced as an American cultural
product in the early 1980s in the form of U.S. export tracks to radio stations and
spread through the inuence of Africa Bambaatas Zulu Nation movement (Beau,
1996), rap was soon hybridized into a glocal genre reective of local identity politics
yet intricately connected to the global popular cultural scene.
The result globally known today as French rap le rap franc xais is a genre employ-
ing techniques developed by rappers in the United Statesthe rhythmic delivery of
rhymes, the use of alliteration and assonancebut delivered in the French language
7
and connected to the sociocultural conditions of Frances multiethnic immigrant
populations. The genre is generally known as rap rather than hip-hop because other
elements of hip-hop culture initially present in the American cultural import, such as
break dancing or grafti, took backstage to rapping in the further development of the
genre on the French popular cultural scene. Although a complete examination of
French raps continuing global connections is beyond the scope of this essay, a few
cases in point are worth mentioning.
One might note, for instance, that its very existence as a major musical genre is
predicated on the availability of global networks of cultural production and distri-
bution, as most French rap artists are (or aspire to be) produced by multinational
labels. By the same token, it is globally distributed and consumedM. C. Solaar,
who spearheaded the development of commercially successful French rap, sold
250,000 copies of his double platinum second album outside of France. Today,
French rap represents the second largest global hip-hop scene (Beau, 1996).
French rap is also intertextually global. Its origins in and continuing connection
to African-American street culture
8
are explicitly recognized and assertively negoti-
ated in the works of French rap artistsas when they speak of French ghetto
culture (Prevos, 1998, p. 68) or satirically turn Paris into a kind of Wild Wild West
in their videos (Liu, 1997).
9
The practice of sampling huge international hits further
establishes the genres global intertextuality. In turn, audiences enjoyment of the
music rests in their possession of enough global cultural capital to get these
intertextual allusions, the likelihood of which is aided by the fact that French rap
is typically presented to francophone audiencesat the music store or in Web sites
on the subjectas a subcategory of the broader (global) hip-hop scene. In other
words, as all cultural products in a globalized environment, the genre is embedded in
an intricate web of global power relations.
French rap is also characterized, however, by its complex and multiple linkages to
the local culture in which it is produced. Unlike rappers in other non-English
speaking environments who struggled to adapt the genre to their native languages
(see, for instance, Condry, 2000, 2001, for an analysis of this process in Japan),
French rap artists quickly developed a poetic literary style drawing from the strong
lyrical tradition of French chansonniers (Liu, 1997)the much celebrated singer-
songwriters who provide political and social commentary, often drawing inspiration
from current events. This strong emphasis on lyrics explains in part the favoring of
rapping over other elements of hip-hop culture in France. French rap artists can
point to the legacy of such cultural icons as George Brassens, Jean Ferrat, Maxime le
Forestier, or Serge Gainsbourg (Prevos, 1998)or even to the more recent influence
of Renaud or Florent Pagny
10
to frame their antiestablishment lyrics and biting
critique of French society within the context of a larger French tradition of socially
engaged artistic expression. For instance, the title song of Starrs (2006)
11
rst solo
album Gare au Jaguarr (Watch for the Jaguarr) humorously transposes the events
described in Brassens famous song Gare au Gorille (Watch for the Gorilla) to the
street culture of French housing projects. In addition, the development of French rap
was tightly connected in the 1990s to the simultaneous emergence of other genres on
the French popular cultural scene with which it signicantly intersects. Its appear-
ance, for instance, on the sound tracks of Beur (second-generation immigrants of
Maghrebi origin) and banlieue lms notably increased its exposure both in France
and abroad (Tarr, 2005).
French rap is, indeed, further localized in the culture of the French banlieuethe
suburban areas of Paris and other major cities that have come to symbolize the
excesses in violence, drug consumption, social dislocation, and delinquency encoun-
tered in financially strapped urban neighborhoods (Prevos, 1998, p. 67). References
to Saint-Denis, Clichy, Rungis, Boulogne, the RER (Paris suburban rail system), or
stores such as Tati where low-income families shop, clearly establish this geograph-
ical and cultural anchorage in the cites (low-income housing projects). Similarly,
through allusions to the Front National (Jean-Marie Le Pens extreme-right party) or
to current French president Nicolas Sarkozy, French rappers forcefully engage in
local politics. A recent song titled Message a la racaille (Rohff, 2004), for instance,
responds to Sarkozys characterization of banlieue youths as scum (racaille) when
he was Minister of Interior. More recently, Starr, Rohff, and others worked to
mobilize young audiences to vote against him in the 2007 presidential election
(Montaigne, 2006). Thus, while borrowing from a foreign genre and intricately
caught in global relationships, French rap draws much of its meaning from local
conditions and cultural connections.
The above conclusion is not particularly surprising, however, considering what
we know about the nature of our contemporary globalized world. Globalization
theorists have long been making similar arguments about a number of other globally
influenced and/or distributed cultural texts. It is only when we take a closer look at
French raps globallocal articulation(s) through the lens of mondialisation that
a more complex vision starts to emerge. French raps denition as French, for
instance, is in itself worth examining. As a reection of banlieue culture, French raps
identity is steeped in the experiences of immigration, diaspora, (post)colonialism,
and racial struggle. Most French rappers are rst- or second-generation immigrants
from Frances former colonies negotiating their complex position in contemporary
French culture and politics and who assertively recognize the legacy of colonialism
on their own identityA chacun sa nostagie, la mienne cetait les colonies [to each
his/her nostalgia, mine was the colonies] sings Solaar (1998), who was born in
Senegal of Chadian parents and moved to Paris as a child. French raps global success
is similarly predicated on the availability of a worldwide francophone community
that is in part the result of Frances colonial past. Thus, characterizing the work of rap
artists as French and selling it to audiences made receptive to French-language
texts through Frances imperialist intervention could be seen as an act of neocolonial-
ism. It could also be interpreted, however, as signaling a shift in the interpretation
of what constitutes French culture toward a more diverse and inclusive denition
reective of Frances complex contemporary sociopolitical reality.
Such a definition is both resisted and negotiated on the French cultural terrain.
Conservative politicians have long expressed their discomfort with the genre. Start-
ing in the 1990s, they have repeatedly attempted to press charges against rappers for
outrage aux bonnes moeurs [breach of moral standards] (Kessous, 2006). Recently,
49 senators and 153 right-wing deputies wrote a letter to the Minister of Justice
Pascal Clement asking him to consider legal pursuits against seven rap groups for
inciting antiwhite racism and hatred of France (Kessous, 2005). In late December
2005, Sarkozy suggested on a radio show that raps appeals to violence were partly
responsible for the riots that had just shaken the country (Muller & Wunder, 2006).
Although few of these politicians attacks have actually resulted in sanctionsthanks
to Frances relatively strong legal protection of artistic expressionrappers biting
characterizations of the French sociocultural environment are clearly contested, at
least by some segments of French society.
French rappers do, however, assertively define their own hybridized identity as
French: Je represente la rime hexagonale [I represent the French
12
rhyme]/Et nai rien
a` voir avec the rap americain [And have nothing to do with American rap], sings
Solaar in his 1998 hit La vie nest quun moment [Life is but a moment]. In claiming
their Frenchness, rappers, who represent a diverse multiethnic community, are
pushing for a redenition of what it means to be French. They are in essence asking
France to deliver on its enlightenment promise of color-blind Liberte, E
galite, Fra-
ternite, while recognizing that they face a different set of sociocultural conditions
than their American counterparts under which the acknowledgement of difference,
which underpins the multiculturalist policies and practices of countries such as
Britain and the USA, has .been rejected as leading to undesirable forms of com-
munitarism (Tarr, 2005, p. 1).
Ultimately, despite much resistance, French rappers assertions of Frenchness
are locally consented to. The works of many of the very artists harassed by politicians
(La Rumeur, IAM, 113) have received some of Frances most prestigious music
awards, including the Victoires de la musique (Beau, 1996). Solaar has been acknowl-
edged as one of the important gures in the exportation of French culture (Liu,
1997, p. 329). A 1996 Nouvel Observateur article titled Le Rap? Il parle la France [Rap?
It speaks of France] placed him alongside other internationally prominent French
icons including Jacques Derrida, Phillipe Starck, and Pierre Boulez (Loupias, 1996).
Rap is one of the most popular music genres in France today and rap artists
French identity is globally acknowledged: Outside of France, they are seen as
representing le rap franc xais. The reasons for this acceptance have, again, much to
do with the intricacies of global geopoliticswith the kinds of relationships that
theories couched in EastWest dichotomies cannot easily accommodate.
French raps success is in part predicated on Frances cultural power struggle with
the United States. As mentioned, despite its diverse cultural roots, hip-hop in its
original form is positioned in France as an American genre. When defined in
relation or opposition to American rap (as Solaar does in La vie nest quun moment),
French rap represents a local antidote to American cultural imperialism. Because it
is in French, French rap also benets from Frances protectionist cultural policies
most of them assertively supported by politicians who otherwise condemn the
genres antiestablishment lyrics and indictment of French racism. Possibly more
importantlyif one is to take seriously Kraidys (2005) assertion that Frances pro-
tectionism has as much to do with the governments desire to protect its ability to
spread French culture abroad as with concerns over the threat of foreign inuence at
homeFrench rap has become a significant cultural export. As indicated, Solaar is
celebrated in part because he contributes to the exportation of French culture.
Ultimately, French rap may not be spreading the kind of culture conservative pol-
iticians would like to see spread, but it is nevertheless spreading French cultural
products abroad and is making much money in the process.
More recently, the FranceU.S. power struggle has taken a new, ironic twist, as
a new generation of rappers have learned to capitalize on Frances conflicted position
toward American culture by developing a genre much closer in style to American
gangster rap than the more literary approach of their predecessors. In asserting their
solidarity with American rappers through self-conscious acts of imitation, these
artists are exploiting the fears of a political elite concerned with the effects of Amer-
ican cultural imperialism on a national ideal of authentic French culture that has
historically denied their hybridizing influence. Their local repertoires of irony, anger,
and resistance are powerfully disturbing not only because of lyrics inciting violence
and rebellion but also because of their suggestion of solidarity with individuals
located outside the French cultural environmentin another of mondalisations
multiple worlds. Their presence illustrates the need for a theoretical approach
more nely attuned to translocal relationships reaching beyond globalizations nor-
mal angle of vision.
Toward a translocal approach
This brief and incomplete analysis of French raps complex intricacies demon-
stratesas hybridity theorists have long arguedthat the global is locally negotiated
in surprising and unpredictable ways. In this case, the negotiation of postcolonial
immigrant identities through the vehicle of rap music happens not only in relation-
ship to the historical legacy of colonialism and the current reality of Frances han-
dling of race relations but is also intricately embedded in power struggles between
France and other Western nations (particularly, the United States), and, more gen-
erally, in the workings of global capitalism. When producing local texts drawing
from a global genre, French rappers are simultaneously negotiating their local and
global positions with the understanding that different facets of their hybrid identi-
tiesas immigrants, ethnic and/or racial minorities, urban, postcolonial, French,
famous, rappersmight take on different meanings in different environments. As
they do so, however, they are not only negotiating the global but also producing it,
as their texts get exported and consumed in other cultural environments. Finally,
French gangster rappers remind us that what might look like signs of homogeni-
zation when viewed from afar may take on new meanings from a closer angle. As
their strategic understanding of transcultural dynamics emerges as a means to chal-
lenge local interpretations, they demonstrate that the global can be used to resist the
local as much as the other way around.
In other words, scholars have much to learn from French rappers whose texts
(and identities) help illustrate the sheer complexity of our interconnected contem-
porary condition and force us to critically (re)consider our current characterization
of transcultural conditions. The tendency in much Anglo-American scholarship to
view the world in EastWest or NorthSouth terms makes it difficult to address the
full implications of the numerous relationships that do not squarely fit within these
divides. Such a model would force us, for instance, to view the work of French
rappers as either an example of Western cultural production (it is modeled after
an American genre and produced in the West) or to consider it solely in relation-
ship to the context of postcolonial relationships. The rst option ignores the histor-
ical and cultural legacies of colonization and immigration on the genre. The second
does violence to rappers claim that they are representing and producing French
culture and theoretically reproduces the process of exclusion these artists are ghting
against in the daily reality of the banlieues.
Unfortunately, the politics of representation in academic discourse often mirror
the politics of representation of globalization, as scholars work is interpreted in light
of their perceived membership in broadly defined groupsWestern, non-
Western, White, minoritywith little consideration to the specific intricacies
of their identities. Although numerous theorists have pointed to the problematic
nature of this essentializing tendency (see, e.g., Alcoff, 1995; Bow, 1995; Elam, 1995;
hooks, 1992), this forced positioning is still common today and adds to the difculty
of addressing power dynamics between and within regions of the world that have
historically been uncritically merged together on our academic theoretical maps.
It also makes it difcult to build coalitions as it hides from view the signicant areas
on which our worlds might intersect.
By more assertively recognizing the multiple overlapping constituencies that
make up our contemporary global condition, the concept of mondialisation help
us get past this blind spot. Viewed as a constantly negotiated concurrent process of
fragmentation and fusion, mondialisation may be used to deconstruct essentializing
dichotomies and open opportunities for the examination of unlikely coalitions.
Under such a model, French rap may not only be interpreted as a process of hybrid-
ization of an Afro-American genre but also as a process of creation of a social world
in which individuals are assertively dening their position in relationship and sep-
aration from other worldsthe French sociocultural environment, African-American
street culture, and the cultural legacy of colonialism. A world in which hyphenated
identities might combine into something new.
Future research might then consider how the different worlds of mondialisation
intersect to contribute to the further theorizing of local-to-local connections. One
might consider, for instance, the local reception of French rap (shamefully neglected
in this essay in the interest of space) not only on the French geographical territory
but also in other francophone environments, including the cultural environments
artists are originally from. The role of local-to-local relationships in the develop-
ment of global racial identity politics should also be addressed and theorized, as well
as the impact of gender on individuals negotiation of the genre. Despite the pro-
liferation of writings about globalization, we have barely started to scratch the surface
of the mind-bogglingly multidimensional nature of transcultural inuence and its
politics. A mental shift from globalization to mondialisation, even if requiring only
a change of a few degrees in our angle of vision, might help us dig just a little deeper.
Notes
1 For lack of a better word, I use the term Anglo American to refer to intellectual pro-
duction written in English and developed in the context of academic institutions in the
United States. Because of the strong cross-fertilization between U.S. and British
intellectuals, however, some of the blind spots identied in this paper can also some-
times be found in the words of British scholars. As Rantanen (2005) notes: The rest of
the world often seems invisible because it rarely gures in textbooks written by U.S. and
British scholars (p. 1).
2 Similarly, a 2003 exhibit on Barthes at the Centre Beaubourg in Paris explained his
theories and provided examples of the texts he analyzed in Mythologies.
3 She also commits the very essentializing mistake she is reacting against (and that I have
just critiqued): what she deems Western feminism is really (middle-class White)
American feminism.
4 Europe has now moved toward a policy of cultural diversity aiming at promoting
European cultural products within the European Union while avoiding the defensive
connotation of the cultural exclusion clause (Mattelart, 2005a, 2005b).
5 By French intellectuals, I mean intellectuals operating within the French cultural
environment and academic system. Thus, Mattelart, while born in Belgium, would t
this category as a professor at Paris VIII and researcher at MSH-Paris-Nord. It should
be noted, however, that theorists outside the French environment, while facing dif-
ferent global circumstances, might share some of the elements of these individuals
approach to globalization. Canadas situation vis-a` -vis the United States or Quebecs
complex relationship to both the United States and France, for instance, cannot be
adequately understood in conceptualizations of globalization focusing solely on
EastWest or NorthSouth power dynamics.
6 The concept of world as described in the literature on symbolic interactionism is
helpful in understanding this characterization of the term. As Blumer (1972) explains:
The term world is more suitable than the word environment to designate the setting,
the surroundings, and the texture of things that confronts [individuals]. It is the world
of their objects with which people have to deal and toward which they develop their
actions (p. 409, emphasis in original).
7 It is important to note here that not all rapping in French ts into the French rap
category. The rap quebecois, for instance, addresses a completely different set of
sociocultural conditions, having mainly to do with Quebecs relationship to
English-speaking Canada.
8 As will soon be addressed, despite the inuence of elements of Jamaican and African
culture on the genre, rap in its original English-language form is in Franceas in
other cultural environments to which it has been exported (see, for example, Condry,
2000, 2001)perceived as an American genre rather than as a more complex hybrid
cultural product. References to the street culture of urban centers familiar to foreign
audiences through Hollywood movies or television series serve to frame it as
(yet another) product of the American cultural environment.
9 In an essay on Solaar, Liu (1997) characterizes French rap as a process of translation
through which elements of American hip-hop are transformed and redened: The
work of translation takes place between Solaar who must have recognized something in
American hip-hop that allowed him in return to respond, in French, with work of his
own (p. 330).
10 The two singers belong to a (relatively) new generation of artists drawing from the
chansonniers tradition.
11 A former member of the group Nique Ta Me`re (fuck your mother), or NTM, along
with Kool Shen. Formed in 1989, NTM was a highly inuential force in the
development of French rap.
12 Because of its shape, France is often referred to as lhexagone (the hexagon).
References
Agnew, J. (2005). Hegemony: The new shape of global power. Philadelphia: Temple University
Press.
Ahmad, A. (1995). The politics of literary postcoloniality. Race and Class, 36(3), 120.
Alcoff, M. L. (1995). The problem of speaking for others. In J. Roof & R. Wiegman (Eds.),
Who can speak: Authority and critical identity (pp. 97119). Urbana, IL: University of
Illinois Press.
Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined communities: Reections on the origin and spread of
nationalism. London: Verso.
Anderson, M. W., & Kingsley, C. (1999). Finding resources for the study of multiculturalism
on the Internet. In M. Prosser & K. S. Sitaram (Eds.), Civic discourse: Intercultural,
international and global media (pp. 3144). Stamford, CT: Ablex.
Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at large: Cultural dimensions of globalization. Minneapolis,
MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Appadurai, A. (2001). Grassroots globalization and the research imagination. In A. Appadurai
(Ed.), Globalization (pp. 121). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Bamyeth, M. (2000). The ends of globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Beau, M. A. (1996). Hip hop and rap in Europe: The culture of the urban ghettos. In
P. Ruttent (Ed.), Music, culture and society in Europe (pp. 129134). Brussels:
European Music Ofce.
Bhabba, H. (1994). The location of culture. New York: Routledge.
Blumer, H. (1972). Symbolic interaction: An approach to human communication. In
R. W. Budd & B. D. Ruben (Eds.), Approaches to human communication (pp. 401419).
Rochelle, NJ: Hayden Book Company.
Bow, L. (1995). For every gesture of loyalty, there doesnt have to be a betrayal: Asian
American criticism and the politics of loyalty. In J. Roof & R. Wiegman (Eds.),
Who can speak: Authority and critical identity (pp. 3055). Urbana, IL: University of
Illinois Press.
Burnham, P. (2002). Class struggle, states, and global circuits of capital. In M. Ruper &
H. Smith (Eds.), Historical materialism and globalization (pp. 113128). New York:
Routledge.
Condry, I. (2000). The social production of difference: Imitation and authenticity in Japanese
rap music. In U. G. Poiger & H. Fehrenbach (Eds.), Transactions, transgressions,
transformations: American culture in Western Europe and Japan (pp. 166184). New York:
Berghan Books.
Condry, I. (2001). Japanese hip-hop and the globalization of popular culture. In G. Gmelch &
W. Zenner (Eds.), Urban life: Readings in the anthropology of the city (pp. 357387).
Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.
Coombes, A., & Brah, A. (2000). Introduction: The conundrum of mixing. In A. Brah &
A. Coombes (Eds.), Hybridity and its discontents: Politics, science, culture (pp. 116).
New York: Routledge.
Crane, D. (2002). Culture and globalization: Theoretical models and emerging trends. In
D. Crane, N. Kawashima, & K. I. Kawasaki (Eds.), Global culture: Media, arts, policy, and
globalization (pp. 125). New York: Routlege.
Croucher, S. (2004). Globalization and belonging: The politics of identity in a changing world.
Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littleeld.
Curren, J., & Park, M. J. (2000). Beyond globalization theory. In J. Curren & M.-J. Park (Eds.),
De-Westernizing media studies (pp. 318). New York: Routlege.
Demers, D. (1999). Global media: Menace of Messiah. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.
Dov, S. (1996). Re-membering and dis-membering Europe: A cultural strategy of
studying the role of communication in the transformation of collective identities. In
S. Braman & A. Sreberny-Mohammadi (Eds.), Globalization, communication, and
transnational civil society (pp. 89103). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.
Durham, G. (2001). Displaced persons: Symbols of South Asian femininity and the returned
gaze in U.S. media culture. Communication Theory, 11, 201217.
Elam, D. (1995). Speak for yourself. In J. Roof & R. Wiegman (Eds.), Who can speak: Authority
and critical identity (pp. 231237). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Enloe, C. (2004). The curious feminist: Searching for women in an age of empire. Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press.
Fang, B. (2006, May 1). Spending spree. U.S. News and World Report, pp. 4250.
Featherstone, M. (1991). Consumer culture and postmodernism. New York: Sage.
Feld, S. (2001). Musical lullaby for world music. In A. Appadurai (Ed.), Globalization
(pp. 189216). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Galtung, J. (1971). A structural theory of imperialism. Journal of Peace Research, 8(2), 81117.
Garca-Canclini, N. (1995). Hybrid cultures: Strategies for entering and leaving modernity.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Giddens, A. (1990). The consequences of modernity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Giddens, A. (1999). Modernity and self-identity: Self and society in the late modern age.
Cambridge: Polity.
Gilroy, P. (1993). Small acts: Thoughts on the politics of Black culture. New York: Serpents Tail.
Goeddertz, T., & Kraidy, M. (2003). The battle in Seattle: U.S. prestige press framing
resistance to globalization. In L. Artz & Y. R. Kamalipour (Eds.), The globalization of
corporate media (pp. 7992). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Hall, S. (1997). The local and the global: Globalization and ethnicity. In A. Kind (Ed.),
Culture, globalization, and the world-system: Contemporary conditions for the representation
of identity (pp. 4168). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Halnon, K. B. (2006). Alienation incorporated: F- the mainstream music in the
mainstream. In L. Langman & D. Kalekin-Fishman (Eds.), The evolution of alienation:
Trauma, promise, and the millennium (pp. 201226). Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littleeld.
Hargreaves, A. (1995). Immigration, race, and ethnicity in contemporary France. London:
Routledge.
Hatchen, W. (1999). The world news prism: Changing media of international communication.
Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press.
Hatchen, W. (2005). The troubles of journalism: A critical look at whats right and wrong with
the press. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Herman, E., & McChesney, R. (1997). The global media: Missionaries of corporate capitalism.
London: Cassell.
Hesmondhalgh, D., & Melville, C. (2001). Urban breakbeat culture: Repercussions of hip-hop
in the United Kingdom. In T. Mitchell (Ed.), Global noise (pp. 86110). Middletown,
CT: Wesleyan University Press.
hooks, b. (1992). Black looks: Race and representation. Boston: South End Press.
Isaak, R. A. (2005). The globalization gap: How the rich get richer and the poor get left further
behind. Upper Saddle River, NJ: FT Prentice Hall.
Iwabuchi, K. (2002). Recentering globalization: Popular culture and Japanese transnationalism.
Durham: Duke University Press.
Iwabuchi, K. (2004). Introduction: Cultural globalization and Asian media connections. In
K. Iwabuchi (Ed.), Feeling Asian modernities: Transnational consumption of Japanese TV
dramas (pp. 122). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Joseph, M. (1999). Introduction: New hybrid identities and performance. In M. Joseph
& J. N. Fink (Eds.), Performing hybridity (pp. 124). Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press.
Kessous, M. (2005). Des parlementaires reclament des poursuites contre des rappeurs [Members
of Parliament request legal action again rappers]. Le Monde. Retrieved June 20, 2007, from
Kessous, M. (2006, June 28). Les poursuites contre le rappeur Monsieur M. jugees irrecevables
[Suits against rapper Monsieur M. deemed inadmissible]. Le Monde. Retrieved June 20,
2007, from http://www.lemonde.fr/
Kraidy, M. M. (2002). Hybridity in cultural globalization. Communication Theory, 12,
316339.
Kraidy, M. (2005). Hybridity: Or the cultural logic of globalization. Philadelphia: Temple
University Press.
Kraniauskas, J. (2000). Hybridity in a transnational frame: Latin-Americanist and
post-colonial perspectives on cultural studies. In A. Brah & A. Coombes (Eds.), Hybridity
and its discontents: Politics, science, culture (pp. 235256). New York: Routledge.
Langman, L., & Kalekin-Fishman, D. (2006). Introduction. In L. Langman & D.
Kalekin-Fishman (Eds.), The evolution of alienation: Trauma, promise, and the millennium
(pp. 120). Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littleeld.
Lee, M. T. (2004). Traveling with Japanese TV dramas: Cross-cultural orientation and
owing identication. In K. Iwabuchi (Ed.), Feeling Asian modernities: Transnational
consumption of Japanese TV dramas (pp. 129154). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University
Press.
Le Maswood, S. J. (2006). The South in international economic regimes: Whose globalization?
New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
Levy, C. (2001). Rap in Bulgaria: Between fashion and reality. In T. Mitchell (Ed.), Global
noise (pp. 134148). Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Liu, C. (1997). French rap/M.C. Solaar. Journal of the Twentieth-Century/Contemporary
French Studies, 1, 327343.
Loupias, B. (1996, March 2127). Le rap? Il parle la France [Rap? It speaks of France].
Le Nouvel Observateur. Retrieved January 14, 2008, from http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.
com
Matouk, J. (2005). Mondialisation altermondialisation. Toulouse, France: Les Essentiels Milan.
Mattelart, A. (2005a). Diversite culturelle et mondialisation [Cultural diversity and
globalization]. Paris: La Decouverte.
Mattelart, A. (2005b). La mondialisation de la communication [The globalization of
communication]. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Mattelart, A. X., & Mattelart, M. (1984). International image markets: In search of an
alternative perspective. London: Comedia.
McPhail, T. (2002). Global communication: Theories, stakeholders, and trends. Boston: Allyn
and Bacon.
McVeigh, B. (2004). Nationalisms in Japan: Managing and mystifying identity. Lanham, MD:
Rowan and Littleeld.
Meehan, E. (2000). Leisure or labor? Fan ethnography and political economy. In I. Hagen &
J. Wasko (Eds.), Consuming audiences: Production and reception in media research
(pp. 7192). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.
Mohanty, C. T. (1991). Under western eyes: Feminist scholarship and colonial discourses. In
C. Mohanty, A. Russo, & L. Torres (Eds.), Third world women and the politics of feminism
(pp. 3360). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Montaigne, V. (2006, October 15). Joey Starr dans lare`ne civique [Joey Starr in the civic
arena]. Le Monde. Retrieved June 20, 2007, from http://www.lemonde.fr/
Mowlana, H. (1986). Global information and world communication. New York: Longman.
Muller, K., & Wunder, J. (2006, January 5). Le rap criminalise [Rap criminalized]. Le Monde.
Retrieved June 20, 2007, from http://www.lemonde.fr/
Murphy, P. (2003). Without ideology? Rethinking hegemony in the age of transnational
media. In L. Artz & Y. R. Kamalipour (Eds.), The globalization of corporate media
hegemony (pp. 5575). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Murphy, P., & Kraidy, M. M. (2003). International communication, ethnography, and the
challenge of globalization. Communication Theory, 13, 304323.
Nakano, Y. (2002). Who initiates a global ow? Japanese popular culture in Asia. Visual
Communication, 1(2), 229253.
Niezen, R. (2004). A world beyond difference: Cultural identity in the age of globalization.
Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Parameswaran, R. (2001). Global media events in India: Contests over beauty, gender, and
nation. Journalism and Communication Monographs, 3(2), 51105.
Park, J. S. (2004). Korean American youths consumption of Korea and Japanese TV dramas
and its implications. In K. Iwabuchi (Ed.), Feeling Asian modernities: Transnational
consumption of Japanese TV dramas (pp. 275300). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University
Press.
Pennay, M. (2001). Rap in Germany: The birth of a genre. In T. Mitchell (Ed.), Global noise
(pp. 111132). Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Pieterse, J. N. (1994). Globalisation as hybridisation. International Sociology, 9, 161184.
Prevos, A. (1998). Hip-hop, rap, and repression in France and the United States. Popular
music and society, 22(2), 6795.
Rantanen, T. (2005). The media and globalization. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Rohff (2004). Message a` la racaille [Message to the scum]. On La erte des notres [CD].
Paris: Virgin Records.
Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Pantheon.
Said, E. (1994). Culture and imperialism. New York: Vintage Books.
Schiller, H. (1993). The context of our work. In K. Nordenstreng & H. Schiller (Eds.), Beyond
national sovereignty: International communication in the 1990s (pp. 332). Norwood,
NJ: Ablex.
Schiller, H. (1976). Communication and cultural domination. New York: M.E. Sharpe.
Skov, L. (2004). Fashion shows, fashion ows: The Asia Pacic meets in Hong Kong. In
K. Iwabuchi, S. Muecke, & M. Thomas (Eds.), Rogue ows: Trans-Asian cultural trafc
(pp. 221246). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Solaar, M. C. (1998). La vie nest quun moment [Life is but a moment]. On MC Solaar [CD].
Paris: Polygram.
Sorge, A. (2005). The global and the local: Understanding the dialectics of business systems.
New York: Oxford University Press.
Spivak, G. C. (1988). Can the subaltern speak? In C. Nelson & L. Grossberg (Eds.), Marxism
and the interpretation of culture (pp. 271313). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Spivak, G. C. (1999). Scattered speculations on the question of cultural studies. In S. During
(Ed.). The cultural studies reader (pp. 169188). New York, Routledge.
Sreberny-Mohammadi, A. (1996). Globalization, communication, and transnational civil
society: Introduction. In S. Braman & A. Sreberny-Mohammadi (Eds.), Globalization,
communication, and transnational civil society (pp. 119). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.
Starr, J. (2006). Gare au jaguarr [Watch out for the jaguarr]. On Gare au Jaguarr [CD]. Paris:
Sony.
Stoler, A. L. (2000). Sexual affronts and racial frontiers: European identities and the cultural
politics of exclusion in colonial Southeast Asia. In A. Brah & A. Coombes (Eds.), Hybridity
and its discontents: Politics, science, culture (pp. 1955). New York: Routledge.
Street, J. (1997). Across the universe: The limits of global popular culture. In A. Scott
(Ed.), The limits of globalization: Cases and arguments (pp. 7589). New York:
Routledge.
Swedenburg, T. (2001). Islamic hip-hop vs. Islamophobia: Aki Nawaz, Natasha Atlas,
Akhenaton. In T. Mitchell (Ed.), Global noise (pp. 5785). Middletown, CT: Wesleyan
University Press.
Tarr, C. (2005). Reframing difference: Beur and banlieue lmmaking in France. New York:
Manchester University Press.
Tehranian, M. (1999). Global communication and world politics: Domination, development,
and discourse. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.
Tomlinson, J. (1999a). Globalization and culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Tomlisnon, J. (1999b). Cultural globalization: Placing and displacing the West. In H. MacKay
& T. OSullivan (Eds.), The media reader: Continuity and transformation (pp. 165177).
London: Sage.
Urla, J. (2001). We are all Malcom X!: Negu Gorriak, hip-hop, and the Basque political
imaginary. In T. Mitchell (Ed.), Global noise (pp. 171193). Middletown, CT: Wesleyan
University Press.
Walsh, B. (2006, April 30). Rain: The magic feet from Korea. Time Magazine. Retrieved
May 26, 2006, from http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1187264,00.html
Warnier, J.-P. (2004). La mondialisation de la culture [The globalization of culture]. Paris:
La decouverte.
Woods, N. (2000). The political economy of globalization. New York: St. Martins Press.
Yegenoglu, M. (1998). Colonial fantasies: Toward a feminist reading of Orientalism.
Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Yegenoglu, M. (2003). Veiled fantasies: Cultural and sexual difference in the discourse of
Orientalism. In R. Lewis & S. Mills (Eds.), Feminist postcolonial theory: A reader
(pp. 542566). New York: Routledge.
Young, L. (2000). Hybriditys discontents: Rereading science and race. In A. Brah &
A. Coombes (Eds.), Hybridity and its discontents: Politics, science, culture (pp. 154170).
New York: Routledge.
Young, R. (1990). White mythologies: Writing history and the West. London, Routlege.
Zakaria, F. (2006, March 6). India rising. Newsweek, pp. 3242.
Zheng, J. (2004). The re-importation of cha yi guan teahouses into contemporary China from
Taiwan: Cultural ows and the development of a public sphere. In K. Iwabuchi,
S. Muecke, & M. Thomas (Eds.), Rogue ows: Trans-Asian cultural trafc
(pp. 197220). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Se remettre de notre illusion doptique :
De la globalisation la mondialisation (par le rap franais)


Rsum

Gardant lesprit la nature politique des travaux universitaires o les discours intellectuels ne
sont jamais isols de lenvironnement national et global dans lequel ils sont dvelopps
(Kraidy, 2005, p. 17), cet article sintresse aux politiques de reprsentation de la globalisation
dans le discours intellectuel amricain travers une analyse critique de certains des axes courants
sur lesquels reposent une grande part des travaux thoriques. Utilisant comme exemple une brve
analyse du dveloppement du rap franais, larticle illustre la faon dont la conceptualisation
universitaire amricaine du monde sur des axes est-ouest ou nord-sud naborde pas
compltement la complexit de linfluence transculturelle et laisse inexplores dimportantes
relations de pouvoir. Comme alternative une telle conceptualisation, cet article propose le
concept de mondialisation [NDLT : en franais dans le texte] tel quadopt par des
chercheurs francophones, comme traduction stratgique du terme anglais globalisation .
Larticle conclut que grce lattention plus particulire porte sur la nature socialement
construite et potentiellement fragmente de linfluence mondiale, le concept de mondialisation
pourrait tre plus adquat pour le dveloppement dune approche thoriquement sophistique,
fonde empiriquement et rellement translocale .

berwinden wir unsere I llusion dOptique (optische Illusion): Von Globalisierung zu
Mondialisierung (durch franzsischen Rap)


Unter Rckbezug auf die politische Natur akademischer Bestrebungen, nmlich den Aspekt,
dass intellektuelle Diskurse niemals isoliert vom nationalen und globalen Umfeld, in welchen
sie sich entwickeln, stattfinden (Kraidy, 2005, p. 17), betrachtet dieser Artikel die Politik der
Reprsentation von Globalisierung im amerikanischen intellektuellen Diskurs auf Basis einer
kritischen Analyse von einigen der blichen Achsen entlang derer akademische Arbeit
organisiert ist. Am Beispiel einer kurzen Analyse der Entwicklung des franzsischen Rap wird
illustriert, wie die amerikanische wissenschaftliche Konzeptualisierung der Welt entlang der Ost-
West, Nord-Sd Linie scheitert, die Komplexitt von transkulturellen Einflssen adquat
abzubilden und dabei zentrale Machtbeziehungen nicht betrachtet werden. Als eine Alternative
zu diesen Konzepten schlgt dieser Aufsatz das Konzept der Mondialisierung als eine von
franzsischen Wissenschaftlern genutzte strategische bersetzung des Begriffs Globalisierung
vor. Durch den breiteren Fokus auf die sozial konstruierte und potentiell fragmentierte Natur
eines globalen Einflusses, knnte Mondialisierung besser geeignet sein, theoretisch durchdachte,
empirisch fundierte und wahrlich translokale Anstze zu entwickeln.
Recuperndose de nuestra I llusion dOptique:
De la Globalizacin a la Mondialisation (A travs del Rap Francs)


Resumen

Teniendo en cuenta la naturaleza poltica de los esfuerzos acadmicos donde los
discursos intelectuales nunca son aislados del contexto nacional y global que los
desarroll (Kraidy, 2005, p. 17), este ensayo trata las polticas de representacin de la
globalizacin en el discurso intelectual Americano a travs de un anlisis crtico de
algunos de los ejes que organizan la mayora del trabajo acadmico. Usando un anlisis
breve del desarrollo del Rap Francs como ejemplo, se ilustra cmo la conceptualizacin
acadmica Americana del mundo a lo largo de las lneas Este-Oeste Norte-Sur fallan en
su trato de la complejidad de la influencia transcultural y dejan inexploradas relaciones
de poder significativas. Como una alternativa a esas conceptualizaciones, este ensayo
propone el concepto de mondialisation adoptado por los estudiosos francfilos como
traduccin estratgica del trmino globalizacin. Se concluye que debido a su enfoque
mayor sobre la construccin social y la naturaleza fragmentaria potencial de la influencia
global, la mondialisation puede adaptarse mejor para el desarrollo de un abordaje terico
ms sofisticado, conectado empricamente, y verdaderamente ms all de lo local.


(Kraidy, 2005, 17 )
mondialisationglobalization

: (Globalization) (Mondialisation)
( )

,
.
, ,

.
,
(mondialisation) .

(mondialisation) , ,
. .

Getting Over Our Illusion D'optique From Globalization To Mondialisation

Caricato da

Informazioni sul documento

Titolo originale

Copyright

Formati disponibili

Condividi questo documento

Condividi o incorpora il documento

Opzioni di condivisione

Hai trovato utile questo documento?

Questo contenuto è inappropriato?

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

Getting Over Our Illusion D'optique From Globalization To Mondialisation

Caricato da

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

ORI GI NAL ARTI CLE

Getting Over Our Illusion dOptique: From

Potrebbero piacerti anche