ABSTRACT
The transnational state is the realization of a utopian dream. Like all paradise constructions, it treads on a proclaimed emotional and cultural superiority, an imagined unity, and a supposed natural status. Transnational American Study is an exercise in distortion. The institutionalization of the present iteration of transnational American study portrays the political space as an already-colonized, stable, and supposedly appropriated space, a verity that functions in part through the cultural production of scholarly communities. Despite the intentionality of a cultural system, studies in social psychology and cultural neuroscience demonstrate that the way that an individual behaves is not necessarily reciprocal or even consistent with their surroundings or presumed demographies. Many contemporary structures, despite their trans-natures, have colonial footprints that often celebrate and tacitly empower Eurocentric values. Patrias, nations, and transnations, however they are studied, iterated, or performed, are a form of containment.
