Abstract
This essay follows the historical itinerary of the internationalized signifier “Shanghai” as it has disseminated across time, space, and media around the terrain of the Pacific Rim. Over the last 150 years, “Shanghai” has achieved the status of a figure or trope that condenses the intuited but as yet not fully decipherable flows of transnational commerce and migration accompanying the rise of modernity. It has also served in different instances as an imaginative effort to grasp by neologism and other formal explorations the increasingly complex web of evolving connections among people, nations, and cultures that together make up such a global condition. Hence this trope also testifies to the importance of the “transpacific” as a crucial dimension in the historical unfolding of that modernity.
Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
