Transnational as Comparative History: (Un)Thinking Difference in the Self and Others

Abstract

Issues of comparison lurk in the subterranean recesses of transnational studies but are rarely enunciated. Popkewitz explores these recesses. He weaves together historical and theoretical considerations in a history of history, examining two sacraments of context and archive, the heart of contemporary historical analyses. These are examined as inscriptions of a particular ordering of time in cultural practices and as a realism that erases differences in its modes of comparing. Popkewitz considers how cultural principles are generated, assembled, and connected in discontinuous time and spaces for understanding difference. His intent is to outline a mode of analysis for thinking about constructions of difference in transnational historical studies through examining the principles of reason that order and classify what is seen, thought about and acted upon.