Traveling Multiculturalism: A Trinational Debate in Translation ROBERT STAM AND ELLA SHOHAT Challenged and debated from both Right and Left, terms such as multi- culturalism and postcolonialism have become subject to the political force fields of the so-called culture wars, in some ways turning into sliding signi- fiers onto which diverse desires and anxieties are projected. While the term multiculturalism has been visible both inside and outside of the academy, postcolonialism maintains a strong academic institutional aura. While multi- culturalism is commonly associated with ongoing debates over race, slavery, and colonialism within single countries, the postcolonial remains more as- sociated with debates over colonialism and diaspora within Europe's ex- colonized geographies. Yet despite differences in emphasis, both movements share a critique of Eurocentrism, racism, and colonial discourse. Both form part of a loose constellation of interdisciplinary research initiatives and po- litical projects that cover a wide range of theories, discourses, and areas of in- quiry . That constellation includes such overlapping discourses as revisionist "bottom-up" history, diasporic indigenous studies, Afro-diasporic studies, critical race theory, transnational feminism, whiteness studies, antiracist pedagogy, media critique, postmodern geography, counter-Enlightenment philosophy, border theory, antiglobalization theory, and many other forms of adversarial knowledge . What interests us in our current project, however, is how cultural de- bates travel across borders, notably in the cases of the United States, France, and Brazil. 1 The three countries were not chosen arbitrarily, since the triad consists of one paradigmatic European country with enormous cultural in- fluence, along with the two most populous and powerful countries in the Americas. Furthermore, the three countries have been historically connected