Cartographies of Belonging: The Marketisation of Desire through Media, Practice and Place

Articles in this themed section offer critical engagement with globalised flows of cultural practice and the resultant formations of identity that manifest (in) transnational and national contexts of place. This introduction outlines a rationale for thinking about the matter of style as an articulation of structures of desire. In their discussion of style, these articles register on-going changes in the global order of desire, evident through the marketisation of desire and its attendant inscription of the political conditions of subjectivity. The disciplinary manifestation of the shift to the ‘more-than-human’ as a pinnacle of postmodern, globalised relations between identity, economy and place presents a new threshold for gender and cultural studies scholarship. Through their study of cultural objects as diverse as fish, femme and feeling, authors problematise the relationship between cartographies of belonging and the force of the nation in the marketisation of desire.