The Outside of the Global

THERE ARE NOT MANY THINGS AS PERFECT AS A GLOBE. A GLOBE IS A "complete or perfect body" (OED), a fully self-sufficient and well-balanced entity. Thus, the globe is by definition all-encompassing, and its perfection, wherein its beauty is supposed to lie, makes it difficult to imagine an outside of the globe. How could it be complete if it depended on an outside? Recent political and theoretical discourses on the global and globalization are fascinated with this logic of completeness. Moreover, they are themselves engaged in creating what they try to observe. The narratives put forward understand the global as teleological process, awaiting its fulfillment in the imaginary totality of an all-encompassing globality. This all-inclusive narrative does not leave out anyone or anything. Even that which resists the imperatives of the global has to be integrated into the global whole in order to achieve and maintain its ideal totality.