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

contingent form of organizing space in the 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 the specificity of nationalism in the postcolonial world. Beginning with the premise that the 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 the vastly dissimilar structural positions occupied by First and Third World' nationalisms by locating them with respect to late capitalism and to the 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 the repartitioning and reinscription of space. These developments have had profound implications for the imagining of national homelands and for the discursive construction of nationalism. To grasp the nature of these changes, we need to be bifocal in our analytical vision. On the 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 the same time, we also need to situate these processes within systemic developments that reinscribe and reterritorialize space in the global political economy. To spell out the argument, I make extensive use of two examples of nonnational collectivities: the Nonaligned Movement (NAM) and the European Community (EC). The examination of imagined communities that transgress the spa