Quebec City 2001 and the Making of Transnational Subjects

Abstract

Summarizes the "Summit of the Americas," held 20-22 Apr 2001 in Quebec City, along with concurrent protests against the meeting in the form of a nearby "People's Summit" & other protest activities, including sit-ins, demonstrations, & other "carnivalesque" events. Efforts at the main summit to redefine the terms of global order in the post-Bretton Woods world economy are reviewed, focusing on the goal of creating "transnational subjects" through new forms of transnational governance as the political adjunct to economic changes in the form of global neoliberalism. Oppositional politics that arose in protest to the goals of the summit are described, highlighting their global spread, particularly in the form of "transnational communities of resistance." General discussion is offered on the political construction of transnational subjects & the politics of opposition against the "hemispheric growth machine" represented by such summits. K. Hyatt Stewart