Mapping the Postnational World System

Abstract

Whereas one model of cognitive mapping involved the sort of imaginary community of the nationstate, the world system in the age of globalization is characteristically postnational. As may be seen in the 1980 thriller The Formula, this can appear as a utopia of late capitalism, a vision of a world with “no more enemies … only customers.” But a driving force behind globalization has been the growing financialization of the world economy. Mapping a world in which financial derivatives embody and facilitate such postmodern flows presents new challenges to representation. The vocation of utopia in the era of globalization is to make sense of the flux of transnational power by projecting a new, postnational cartography.