Transnationality

A transnational approach is one of the most recent developments in crime fiction scholarship. This chapter provides an overview of the debate over “transnationality”, especially in contraposition to other terms, such as “cosmopolitanism”, and “global”, with which “transnational” is often confused. It illustrates the most trends in scholarship, including a focus on the transnational detective whose analysis is often interlinked with a postcolonial perspective on crime fiction; the representation of transnational crime and its problematic dynamics with the institution of the nation-state. The chapter discusses the transnational reader of a genre that often functions as a cultural mediator or a tourist guide for the armchair traveller; and the transnational brand and its most successful creature, the Nordic noir. It concludes by arguing that in crime fiction scholarship a theorisation of the actual transnational space of investigation is still lacking.