The term transnational has become a way of describing a network of political, cultural, and economic relations that cross politically defined national borders. However, this definition does not sufficiently attend to the material and humanistic conditions of exchange in such a way as to provide insight into the experience of transnationality. While it is tempting to look at an increase in productions taking place across borders as imbued with liberatory potential, this is not the case. Transnational production ought to mean shared collaboration and circulation of diverse ideas–more than the creation of diverse economic stakeholders–and the overcoming of unequal systems of exchange.
Higbee and Lim have called for a “critical transnational” distinct from the common use of the term, which they say runs the risk of obscuring “the question of imbalances of power by ignoring the issue of migration and diaspora and the politics of difference that emerge” within transnational flows. A critical transnationalism would be one that is “always attentive to questions of postcoloniality, politics, and power, and how these may, in turn, uncover new forms of neocolonialist practices.” In this way, the transnational can be incorporated into a coeval regime of thought: truly transnational cultural production and criticism must always be engaged with and aware of the idea that they constantly risk recapture by unequal social, economic, and cultural relations, and will strive for the acknowledgement of plural relations in shared space, never dependent on a proportional understanding of the capital invested.
Coevality is an online publication and a collective effort by the graduate students at the University of Pittsburgh in Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory Terry Smith’s spring 2016 course, “Coeval Connectivity in Contemporary Conditions.” Smith observes three predominant currents within contemporary art: continuing modernities, transitional transnationality, and contemporaneous difference in “Coevality: Global Ethics in a Time of Total Change,” a series of lectures, symposia, and research projects. These currents address, respectively, the fall of globalization, the declining of decolonization, and the expanding of equality and coeval commons. The lattermost current is our concern here. Surveying the contemporary social, economic, political, and artistic landscapes from this vantage, Coevality weaves together interdisciplinary metonyms that relay back to these currents, opening up new flows of knowledge.
Lily Brewer, project manager and editor-in-chief
Marina Tyquiengco, editor and contributor
Gabrielle Rajerison, contributor
Emy Takada, contributor
Kuhu Tanvir, contributor
John Taylor, contributor
Juan Velasquez, contributor
Yijing Wang, contributor
Nicole Coffineau, copy editor and research assistant to Terry Smith
Coevality is an online publication and a collective effort by the graduate students at the University of Pittsburgh in Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory Terry Smith’s spring 2016 course, “Coeval Connectivity in Contemporary Conditions.” Smith observes three predominant currents within contemporary art: continuing modernities, transitional transnationality, and contemporaneous difference in “Coevality: Global Ethics in a Time of Total Change,” a series of lectures, symposia, and research projects. These currents address, respectively, the fall of globalization, the declining of decolonization, and the expanding of equality and coeval commons. The lattermost current is our concern here. Surveying the contemporary social, economic, political, and artistic landscapes from this vantage, Coevality weaves together interdisciplinary metonyms that relay back to these currents, opening up new flows of knowledge.
Lily Brewer, project manager and editor-in-chief
Marina Tyquiengco, editor and contributor
Gabrielle Rajerison, contributor
Emy Takada, contributor
Kuhu Tanvir, contributor
John Taylor, contributor
Juan Velasquez, contributor
Yijing Wang, contributor
Nicole Coffineau, copy editor and research assistant to Terry Smith
coevality 