And Why ‘Trans’ All the Time? A Transnational Forum
And Why ‘Trans’ All the Time? A Transnational Forum

Summary/Abstract: To judge from congress titles, ‘trans’ is certainly the current name of the game: "Trans/American, Trans/Oceanic, Trans/lation" is the title of the IASA Congress in Lisbon, and "The United States from Inside and Out: Transnational American Studies" was the name of the annual meeting of the American Studies Association, 2006. The ubiquity of the prefix may raise suspicions It certainly did so for the organizers and participators of the session called ‘Academic Crossroads: Debating Transnationalism’s Second Phase’ at the ASA meeting in 2006. The addition of the ‘second phase’ tried to underline just that: there should be time for a second phase to consider the conceptual and epistemological consequences of the use of ‘trans’, considering the fact that it has been the code word for quite some time now, signalling an opening up of participation and a loosening of boundaries.Nevertheless, ‘the second phase’ may denote a sense of stable categorization. The first phase is over; now it is time for the second. This risk was articulated in the discussion after the session, and therefore the idea came up that the original contributions could be condensed and published as a forum for a consideration of transnational implications. The juxtaposition of different texts would make them resonate to make new ground for the interpretation of ‘trans’, and a forum could also invite more scholars to join the discussion.

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