• DOI:10.1215/10642684-7-4-663
• Corpus ID: 144508773

Global Identities: Theorizing Transnational Studies of Sexuality

@article{Grewal2001GlobalIT,
  title={Global Identities: Theorizing Transnational Studies of Sexuality},
  author={Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan},
  journal={GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies},
  year={2001},
  volume={7},
  pages={663 - 679}
}

• Inderpal Grewal, Caren Kaplan
• Published 1 September 2001
• Sociology, Political Science
• GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies

In modernity, identities inevitably become global. Indeed, few things remain local in the aftermath of the rise of capitalism. Just as goods and people come to circulate in new ways, so too identities emerge and come into specific relations of circulation and expansion. In this globalized framework of encounter and exchange, sexual identities are similar to other kinds of identities in that they are imbued with power relations. These power relations are connected to inequalities that result from earlier forms of globalization, but they have also generated new asymmetries. Our task is to examine both the specificities and the continuities within the globalization of sexual identities at the present juncture. For the most part, throughout the twentieth century, what we might call politically “progressive” studies of sexuality emerged as a result of identity politics and social movements. Increasingly, with the rise of ethnic and postcolonial studies and the growing emphasis on diaspora in American studies, the scholarship on sexuality is globalized.1 Yet thinking simply about global identities does not begin to get at the complex terrain of sexual politics that is at once national, regional, local, even “cross-cultural” and hybrid. In many works on globalization, the “global” is seen either as a homogenizing influence or as a neocolonial movement of ideas and capital from West to non-West.2 Debates on the nature of global identities have suggested the inadequacy of understanding globalization simply through political economy or through theories of “Western” cultural imperialism and have pushed us to probe further the relationship between globalization and culture.3 Yet how do we understand these emerging identities, given the divergent theories regarding the relationship between globalization and cultural forma-