Nomadic Elocution: Transnational Discourse in Abdourahman Waberi's Transit

An analysis of Transit's representation of borders and mobility exposes the paradoxical and contradictory nature of national borders in twenty-first century Europe. This paper argues that Abdourahman Waberi's novel challenges and offers a nuanced response to the Hardt and Negri definition of Empire, exposing the postcolonial nomad's "infinite possibility" to be one of necessity, governed by class and social position. Specifically, the subaltern protagonist of Transit functions as "border artist" who subverts the regulatory machinery of the neocolonial nation state through acts of what I term "nomadic elocution" that unsettle statist border structures while simultaneously and paradoxically rearticulating them. I wager that Waberi's text demonstrates that in place of the global smoothness championed by Hardt and Negri, globalization structures itself through centers and peripheries that are deeply rooted in the nation state and a decidedly colonial calculus.