1. Transnational should replace International.
Kaplan and Grewal (2002) argue that "transnational" should replace "international" as a way of cutting ties with historical problems of nationalist ideologies. "International" implies that nations are discrete entities. Transnationalism traces circuits of politics, economics, and cultures that are produced by policies of global inequality.
2. Transnational links nations together, thereby destabilizing binaries.
"Transnational practices" involve alliances, subversions, and complicities that allow us to examine global power asymmetries. Linkage theory demonstrates connections between nations and governments. It also destabilizes forms of hegemony dependent upon binaries and center-periphery conceptions of multi-culturalism.
3. Women's studies should reconfigure itself against nationalist binaries. This move has four dimensions:
A. Critiquing boundaries -- Identities are often formed based on boundaries. We therefore need to examine the hegemonic production of boundaries.
B. Complicity and Conflict -- Alliances are important, but we should be careful not to miss conflicting readings of texts that aim to unite through commonality.
C. Critiquing "common sense" -- Ideologies are built in politics of time and space. We need to recontextualize ideological notions with regard to nationalist structures.
D. Deconstructing "high" and "low" culture -- Gender is built through lots of forms. New media is important now. We need to look across divides to find gendered representations.
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