ABSTRACT
This book, Transbordering Latin Americas: Liminal Places, Cultures, and Powers (T)Here, explores transbordering/transnational Latin American sociocultural and spatial conditions across the globe and across scales—from the gendered and racialized body to the national and transnational arena. What do we mean by “transbordering Latin Americas”? When we use the plural Latin Americas, we purposefully implode the notion of a unified, cohesive, and static Latin America and a corresponding singular identity—a way of being or being perceived as Latin American. The phrase “transbordering Latin Americas” thus comprises instances of that which can be defined as “Latin American” (which is, in turn, open to debate and transformation), which occurs through plurilocal societal relations— existing within, between, and above the traditional container spaces of national and continental societies without clear or stable “motherlands” (Pries 2004; Irazábal, 2012). Latin Americas in plural aims to push further the problematization of “methodological nationalism,” or the tendency to liken society to the nation-state. Indeed, despite its continuous undeniable importance in framing social dynamics, the nation-state has been debunked as the “natural” unit of the modern world and particularly as a useful one for the study of migration and diasporic phenomena (Duany 2011; Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002). This book suggests the need to go beyond not only “methodological nationalism” but also “methodological continental-ism” to effectively deconstruct and reconstruct the notion of multiple and fluxing Latin Americas.
