ABSTRACT
The approach to national belonging associated with the idea that the nation is based on a set of intrinsic characteristics people are born with often translates into a quasi-metaphysical conception of the nation. With this broad understanding of the term transnational in mind, then, thinking of literature in transnational terms requires exploring its origins and circulation in modes of production that extend beyond the nation, and the racial, ethnic, and religious groups that comprise it. A transnational perspective shifts primary attention from the universal to the particular. A transnational perspective also insists that we think critically about concepts like universality, purity, and homogeneity, especially when those concepts derive from a specifically Western perspective. One important facet of this engagement, both in transnational literature and among critics who have studied it from various angles, is a fascination with cosmopolitanism.
