Fictions of the Trans-American Imaginary

Abstract

In a variety of discursive and material forms, artists, activists and cultural critics are in the process of documenting a shift in late-twentieth-century notions of what constitutes a nation, a people, and even subjectivity itself. This shift has important implications for the categories and frameworks through which literary scholars are approaching the study of modern fiction. In contrast to former paradigms by which national identity and sovereignty have been understood in the United States, emerging forms of study variously organized around notions of the "new" or "post-nationalist" offer strikingly different conceptions. 1 Eschewing notions such as consensus, uniqueness, or even subversion in the construction of the national subject that have often guided American literary historiography, the essays collected in this special issue of MFS participate in the production of this alternative by articulating the idea of the transnational imaginary as a guiding concept.