Resistance, Accommodation, or Haggling: Postcolonial Theory and International Business Communication (original) (raw)

his essay examines two models of globalization-one that outlines forms of radical resistance to transnational corporate power structures, and another that instructs business people how to participate in transnational finance and commerce-in order to examine how postcolonial theory might usefully inform, transform, or challenge the teaching of communication in M.B.A. programs in the United States. In the 1990s, scholars and activists like Masao Miyoshi offered models of resistance to the development of top-down globalization while writers on business communication, such as David Victor, outlined what we might call avenues of accommodation to a global economy. We might, however, stake out a third option for the ways we negotiate solidarities and subject positions within university-one of the "sites of resistance" that Miyoshi identified in the 1990s: postcolonial haggling. In the specific pedagogical context of teaching management communication, haggling "over" national identities can help us challenge practices that work at the transnation level in order to keep postcolonial national movements in check. l What we should recognize is that in an era of globalization, individuals and groups must often turn to national identity as an important if not the only form of self-determination. I borrow the term "haggling" from Hamid N aficy' s writing on Iranian exile culture in Southern California. Focusing on the liminality of exilic subjectivity, Naficy explains, "Haggling stems from holding two essentially incompatible attitudes simultaneously involving the disavowal and recognition of difference"(Making 9).2 This ambivalence toward their place within culture allows exiles to avoid being directly hailed ideologically, and to create innovative forms of identity.3 Similarly, many jae 25.3 (2005)