English Departments Sit on Globalization Throne

The happy-go-luck belief of globalization needs a reality check. As mentioned in "Towards a Critique of Globalcentrism: Speculations on Capitalism's Nature, Coronil states that corporates' "image of globalization offers the promise of unified humanity no longer divided…as if they were underwritten by the desire to erase the scars of congenital past or to bring to harmonious end, these discourses set in motion the belief that the separate histories, geographies, and cultures that have divided humanity are now being brought together…"(Coronil 2). What then happens to those who have not forgotten about the factors that do not separate us, but rather, make us unique?
Gikandi questions the intentions of globalization and postcoloniality, "Do the key terms in both categories describe a general state of cultural transformation in a world where the authority of the nation-state has collapsed or are they codes for explaining a new set of amorphous images and a conflicting set of social conditions?" Gikandi argues that one can no longer assume that one's location and cultural practices have any sort of connection. Just because one lives in America does not mean he or she upholds American traditions and values.
When speaking of globalization, it is important not to forget its influence on language. The study of English literature is caught between nationalism and globalization. The English language has quickly become the "global" language and English Studies has become privileged in globalization. English Studies, and the writers taught within the department, are predominantly from England and America. What of English writers that are not British or American? What of Fernando Pessoa? What of Henry Louis Vivian Derozio? English departments are just as biased and unwilling to "globalize" and should not be praised. As Gikandi reminds us, "it was not until the 1960s that major English departments in the United States began to allow Jews, women, and blacks into their faculty" (Gikandi 648).


Works Cited

Coronil, Fernado. "Towards a Critique of Globalcentrism: Speculations of Capitalism's Nature.

Gikandi, Simon. "Globalization and the Claims of Postcoloniality."