Trans-spatial Utopias

Abstract

The ‘trans-’ perspectives offered in this special issue are heady stuff. Post-structuralism (philosophy) meets the digital age (electronics), meets globalization (economics), and meets translingual practice (linguistics) to create a perfectly utopian or placeless space for future exploration. I want to first add my voice to the excitement generated by this trans-perspective, and then examine more closely the ways in which its dominant spatial metaphor gets declined across each of the papers, and finally raise a word of caution against the current engagement with space and the concomitant neglect of time and history. I end with a plea to bring back historicity and subjectivity into our applied linguistic enterprise.