CLAUDE MCKAY AND DISSIDENT INTERNATIONALISM

Abstract

poses several questions central to much transnational political theory: “What does it mean to be a ‘citizen of the world’? Through what institutions is this ‘citizenship’ expressed? Is it mediated through various particular, more local solidarities?” (90). Questions like these are at the core of many well-known theories of globality and locality. Arjun Appadurai, for example, examines the multiple ways in which transnational networks play a role in the production of locality, and Homi Bhabha examines the ways in which transnational Xows of culture and affect are inscribed in local patterns of contestation.1 Less familiar, however, is the note of skepticism audible in Calhoun’s interrogation of cosmopolitanism as a political project. When “a large proportion of global civil society—from the World Bank to non-governmental organizations setting accountancy standards—exists to support capitalism and not pursue democracy” (92), what credible institutions of global self-government can we point to? Ultimately, Calhoun argues, if cosmopolitan democracy is to be “more than a good ethical orientation for those privileged to inhabit the frequent traveller lounges, it must put down roots in the solidarities that organize most people’s sense of identity and location in the world” (112); in other words, it must be built from the ground up, from “networks of directly interpersonal social relations, such as those basic to local community” (98). This ideal of local autonomy within transnational self-government is frequently invoked in contemporary theories of global democracy.2 But its practical corollary—what this ideal would look like in terms of institutions, practices, and regulative mechanisms—is often difWcult to visualize. For example, in A Critique of Postcolonial Reason, Gayatri Spivak notes that invocations of local, concrete experience all too often Claude MCKay and dIssIdent InternatIonalIsM