Globalization and Postcolonialism

Some general ideas about globalization:

Globalization is a word that is thrown around a lot and therefore can seem to have a vague meaning. Fernando Coronil, in his article "Towards a Critique of Globalcentrism: Speculations on Capitalism's Nature," focuses on globalization in an economic and geographic sense. I like what he says about a need to reorganize and redefine groups of people. A lot of discussion about globalization is the idea of boundaries between peoples and nations being blurred. But I think it is a mistake to tout this as a success of international relations. Most of the world is still extremely divided by issues of race and money, and its relationship to the Western World. Iran is a good example. Iranians fundamentally look at life differently than Americans. I know I am generalizing here, and certainly do not want to forget that they are individuals too, but, in general, they have a different moral and ethical outlook on life. Their decisions about how to live are contrary to how we want them to live. Women do not have the same opportunities as we do. Their economic status and freedom is nowhere near ours. I do think that in some ways the world is becoming smaller thanks to technologies and the proliferation of English and Western ideas, but it is too soon to claim the erasure of boundaries. A lot of the tensions today occur because the U.S. and other Western nations are trying to erase these boundaries in order to reinstate their hegemonic power. Maybe they are not looking to colonize land and peoples, but there are other things to control, such as economic and political ideologies. I don't think what I am saying is too far off of Coronil because he also talks about the dark side of globalization: "While the elites of these nations are increasingly integrated in transnational circuits of work, study, leisure, and even residence, their impoverished majorities are increasingly excluded from the domestic economy and abandoned by their states" (368). It seems everywhere that the rich are getting richer, the middle class is vanishing, and the poor are getting poorer. Again, these are generalizations, but it is important to distinguish between the elite immigrants who have been educated and able to work or have money, and the millions of countrymen who are still living in their broken down native countries, or have immigrated but not failed to substantially improve their lives. Simon Gikandi says in his article “Globalization and the Claims of Postcoloniality,” "The majority of the postcolonial subjects who live through the experience of globalization cannot speak. And when they speak, they sometimes speak a language that is alien to their liberal sympathizers or the postcolonial émigré elite” (644). I think that over time, as technologies and opportunities continue to progress that eventually other nations will be able to “catch up,” but that is going to be on their terms, not ours. I like Gikandi’s discussion about how English brought together writers from colonized countries. A discourse about the struggles for post-colonial identity is possible with English as the vehicle. If everyone were only knowledgeable in their own language, it would be very difficult to communicate and to move forward. And some great pieces of literature would not have been written, (or translated, as may be the case) robbing the world of some great thinkers.