I Want To Break Free

Who’d of thought a Queen classic would so aptly sum up transnational history. As the first verse goes:

I want to break free
I want to break free
I want to break free from your lies
You’re so self satisfied I don’t need you
I’ve got to break free
God knows, God knows I want to break free

Much like Queen, transnational history seeks to break free, in this case from traditional grand national narratives, narratives which Wendy Kozol would argue are more often than not ethnocentric and imperialistic. Although the extent to which these histories can be conclude as lies is highly debatable, it represents an archaic form of historiography which translation history seeks to challenge. As Sven Beckert states, transnational history offers a “way of seeing” which focuses on mobility, seeking to subvert the significance of the nation state which has chained historians down for too long. The application of this can be seen in the introduction of Transnational Lives, for by taking mobility rather nation as its frame work it seeks to explore the lives of those who have previously been ignored and misunderstood by national biographers.

If the methods of anthropologist George Marcus are examined, a transnational approach to writing biographies would in fact, seem the most appropriate. Marcus argues that biographers must ‘follow the people’ examining the “chains, paths, threads, conjunctions, or juxtapositions of locations”, all attributes encouraged within transnational history.

Transnational history, therefore, seeks to break the reader free from preconceptions of national identity which have continuously defined the hierarchies of scholarly thought. A reaction against a binary presentation of world i.e. North vs South, West vs East, First world vs Third world, where lesser developed nations are too often simplified and overlooked. Transnational Lives takes this one step further, focusing on the significance of cultural history and feminist analysis, arguing that transnational history has too long been dominated by economic and political approaches. Traditional forms of study which have been found to display an underlying gendered schism. In this way, I want to break free is again comparable, for within the music video Queen decided to dress up as women. A funny coincidence and yet, the reaction to the video saw it banned from MTV for simply challenging social norms. Although transnational history has never produced such an extreme response, much like Queen, it seeks to challenge and push boundaries, offering new exciting ways to examine history.

An example of this can be found in the first chapter of Transnational Lives “A Story with an Argument: Writing the Transnational Life of a Sea Captain’s Wife”, a work which I took great pleasure in reading. The transnational approach to Eunice Richardson Stone Connolly life illustrating racism cross national boundaries, revealing a fluidity which goes against traditional understanding.

So as this semester progresses I hope to embrace my inner Freddie and break free from the national narratives which transnational history seeks to challenge.