ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews contribution to the ongoing conversations within Inter-American Studies on method and the scope of thematic interest. The ascendency of prefixes such as 'trans' or 'inter' in cultural studies, American or inter-American, can be read as an acknowledgement that the mobility of people, products, and ideas have become one of the central concerns of EuroAmerican modernity. Actually, it has been a major issue much longer. Since the beginning of European colonization, millions of people, migrants, refugees, exiles, diasporans, have moved to and between the two Americas, and they continue to do so today, with still growing intensity. Biotic mobility is both the same as and different from those other mobility practices we are usually concerned with. Its axes are horizontal and latitudinal like those other forms of mobility. In many instances where intimate ties forged by biotic mobility are making themselves felt, the ties between event and meaning are markedly unstable.
