Christine D. Connelly

Cross-body Lead, Counterbody Motion: Political and Poetic Notes Towards a Sociology of Globalization, Nation-building and Transcultural Performativity in Toronto Salsa Christine D. Connelly

Transculturation represents the potential of a third space in which to refigure the terms of identification beyond majoritarian framings obliging assimilation, reproduction and homogenization within a dominant order of authenticity and legitimacy, especially where the counterpolitical has failed in its negation to move beyond reiterating conventional binaries. This semi-fictional auto-ethnography engages the reader from the crossroads between majoritarian and minoritarian relations of cultural production in the process of remaking cultural power. Here, the salsa dance floor is taken up as a site of border-crossings rife with uprisings between flirtation and affixation, pillage and restitution, alienation and recentering in an attempt to examine the limits of popular culture and transculturation, and in problematizing dominant reterritorialization of the margins in contemporary cosmopolitan urban life. Within gaps, pauses and off-time lapses, counterpuntal voices of an emergent Latino-Canadian cultural studies sound off in counterbody motion.