It was an article on rape by Sharon Marcus that first “drove home” to me the force of globalization. The force of it as a discourse, that is, as a language of domination, a tightly scripted narrative of differential power. What I mean by “globalization’’is that set of processes by which the world is rapidly being integrated into one economic space via increased international trade, the internationalization of production and financial markets, the internationalization of a commodity culturebromoted by an increasingly networked global telecommunications system. A forceful visual image of this present and future domain is the photograph of Spaceship Earth that is increasingly used to advertise the operating compass of global banks or businesses, promoting the message that “we” all live in one economic world.’Heralded as a “reality” by both the Right and the Left, globalization is greeted on the one hand with celebration and admiration, on the other with foreboding and dismay. This paper focuses initially upon left discussions in which globalization is represented as the penetration (or imminent penetration) of capitalism into all processes of production, circulation, and consumption, not only of commodities but also of meaning: 2