The multinational as a myth-prince of the global south: Writing back an emancipating imaginary to the global north
以华为在中国和欧盟(1987-2020)的案例,提出跨国公司作为从全球南方到全球北方的“回写神话王子”,理论化其解放想象的角色,并识别四个回写阶段。
Three decades of discourse on rising emerging nations have failed to produce a theory of emerging multinational-led emancipation. This paper draws on the case of Huawei in China and the European Union (1987–2020) to theorize multinationals’ role in writing back an emancipating imaginary from the Global South to the Global North. Combining postcolonial theory of the multinational as a hybrid space, and a post-Gramscian lens on the multinational as a counter-hegemonic agent, I theorize the multinational as a “writing-back myth-prince.” The lens of a multinational as a writing-back agent and space from the global south radically broadens the emancipatory potential of the key postcolonial concept mimicry. It also affords a view on emancipation beyond the opposites and distincts of very different subject positions in the Global South and North. I identify four writing back phases, each of which involves the political and fantasmatic articulation of an emancipating imaginary from the Global South. I develop critical explanations of the four writing back phases, insofar as they reproduce inequality, disenfranchisement and oppression, and weaken the multinational as a space and agent of hybridity rather than essentialism.