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Ottmar Ette & Gesine Müller (eds.) (2012). Worldwide. Archipels de la mondialisation. Archipiélagos de la globalizáción. Madrid and Frankfurt: Iberoamericana-Vervuert. 416pp. hbk. ISBN: 978-8484896-70-8. €29.80.
The premise of this volume is that the metaphor of the archipelago offers a promising conceptual model for thinking the ongoing process of globalization. As observed in the text serving "A modo de introducción" [By way of an introduction], the coteries of cultural studies and postcolonial studies are at something of an impasse in dealing with ethnic or cultural difference without falling into the sin of essentialism or, to put it another way, coming to grips with the double problematic of identity and relationality in cultural systems caught up in the turmoil of globalization. The metaphor is attractive, not only because, as Bertrand Westphal writes, "the concept of the archipelago is one of the most complex that there is" (p. 391), but also perhaps because the concept is so elusive, indefinite, and indeed ill-defined, as Westphal hints: "one evokes the idea of the archipelago from the moment when one can attest to the presence of a certain number of islands (the minimum number of which, to my knowledge has never been defined) that harbour a geographic proximity and a geological homogeneity" (p. 391). The archipelago is "a sea sprinkled with islands" (p. 388), sharing an unspecified dosage of proximity and a similarly indeterminate degree of homogeneity. Here, we have a more flexible model for "bordering": the neologism of contributing author Naoki Sakai in his 'Heterolingual address and transnationality: translation and bordering' (pp. 343-58). The notion of archipelago, etymologically the "archi'-sea'" (p. 387), invites one to weaken the exclusionary act of bordering and replace the rigid frontier with a literally fluid boundary. As such, the archipelago in its literal and metaphorical senses provides for a quasi-deterritorialized notion of identity and relationality, as opposed to strictly insular, national, regional or continental modes of demarcation.
The volume is the result of a conference held in Berlin and titled Weltweit/worldwide. Los archipiélagos como espacios de prueba de una con-vivencia global (Instituto Iberoamericano, June 29 - July 1, 2011). As such, and as is often the case, it brings together a wealth of materials, but in a series of articles of uneven quality. One might...