Globalized World of Desires: Transnational Representations and Stereotypes in Ruth L. Ozeki’s My Year of Meats

Abstract

Globalized World of Desires analyzes My Year of Meats, reading it as a text that divulges complicated desires embedded in transnational representations of our globalized world. Applying Rey Chow`s interpretation on the function of stereotypes as unavoidable elements in any act of representations, this paper considers main characters` and the writer Ozeki`s desires to represent national and transnational spaces as desires to stereotype. Chow asserts that an act of stereotyping should be understood as a political tactic and power to intervene and control. And I argue that Chow`s analysis of stereotypes as qualities intrinsic in every attempt to represent allows a reading of My Year of Meats as a text that demonstrates intriguing transnational contests for the right to stereotype. By examining the characters` and Ozeki`s convoluted desires to represent and thus to control, the paper highlights complex mechanism of cross-cultural and transnational representations and stereotypes in the age of massive global commerce. In the process, the ideology of American liberal multiculturalism displayed through the main protagonist Jane and Ozeki becomes under scrutiny.