The Song of the Nonaligned World: Transnational Identities and the Reinscription of Space in Late Capitalism

contingent form of organizing space in world. National identity appears to be firmly spatialized and seemingly immutable, becoming almost a natural marker of cultural and social difference. This article problematizes nationalism by juxtaposing it and other forms of spatial commitment and identity, particularly transnational ones. In so doing, it seeks to illuminate specificity of nationalism in postcolonial world. Beginning with premise that structures of feeling (R. Williams 1961:48-71) that produce a location called the nation are not identical in differently situated places, I wish to conceptualize vastly dissimilar structural positions occupied by First and Third World' nationalisms by locating them with respect to late capitalism and to postcolonial world order. Connecting such global phenomena with questions of place and identity is consonant with recent moves in anthropological theory that urge us to go beyond the field to see how transnationalism refracts and shapes the local.2 The changing global configuration of postcoloniality and late capitalism have resulted in repartitioning and reinscription of space. These developments have had profound implications for imagining of national homelands and for discursive construction of nationalism. To grasp nature of these changes, we need to be bifocal in our analytical vision. On one side, we need to investigate processes of place making, of how feelings of belonging to an imagined community bind identity to spatial location such that differences between communities and places are created. At same time, we also need to situate these processes within systemic developments that reinscribe and reterritorialize space in global political economy. To spell out argument, I make extensive use of two examples of nonnational collectivities: Nonaligned Movement (NAM) and European Community (EC). The examination of imagined communities that transgress spa