Afterword: Motions of global periodization

Abstract

I would crack between my teeth the candied shell of an artificial fruit, and a burst of light would illuminate my palate with a taste of blackcurrant or pineapple: all the colours, all the lights were mine, the gauzy scarves, the diamonds, the laces; I held the whole party in my mouth. I was never attracted to paradises flowing with milk and honey, but I envied Hansel and Gretel their gingerbread house: if only the universe we inhabit were completely edible, I used to think, what power we would have over it! (de Beauvoir 1959, 7)The seductive promise of the 'global' is an illusion: a sphere can never be seen in its entirety at once, not without distortion. In Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, Simone de Beauvoir (1959) writes about herself as a child who eventually realizes she is not the center or the whole of existence. She tries to devour the world, to absorb the outside into her self-constitution. Confronted with a world whose bounds exceed the reaches of even what she can expand her mouth to consume, she fills her childhood with cry