The Limits of Cosmopolitanism: Globalization and Its Discontents in Contemporary Literature (Routledge Studies in Comparative Literature)

"This book examines the limits of cosmopolitanism in contemporary literature. In a world in which engagement with strangers is no longer optional, and in which the ubiquitous demands of globalization clash with resurgent localist and nationalist sentiments, cosmopolitanism is no longer merely a horizon-broadening aspiration but a compulsory order of things to which we are all conscripted. Focusing on literary texts from such diverse locales as England, Algeria, Sweden, former Yugoslavia, and the Sudan, the essays in this collection interrogate the tensions and impasses in our prison-house of cosmopolitanism." -- Provided by publisher Cover 1 Half Title 2 Seires Page 3 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Contents 6 Introduction 8 PART I: Cosmopolitan Hegemons 18 1 Cosmopolis Besieged: The Exilic Reunion of Bogdan Bogdanović? and Milo Dor 20 2 Building Bridges: Constructing a Comparative Sufi Cosmopolitanism in Rock and Roll Jihad 40 3 Sunjeev Sahota’s Fictions of Failed Cosmopolitan Conviviality 60 4 Stuck Between England and Egypt: Sudanese Cosmopolitanism in Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North and Leila Aboulela’s Lyrics Alley 77 PART II: Subjects of Displacement 92 5 Unbelonging: Caryl Phillips and the Ethics of Disaffiliation 94 6 Why Is the Patient “English”?: Disidentification in Michael Ondaatje’s Fiction 112 7 Alien-Nation and the Algerian Harraga: The Limits of Nation-Building and Cosmopolitanism as Interpretive Models for the Clandestine Immigrant 130 PART III: Circulated Objects 148 8 Cosmopolitanism and Orality in Okey Ndibe’s Foreign Gods, Inc 150 9 Animated Plastic and Material Eco-Cosmopolitanism in Through the Arc of the Rain Forest 166 10 Paying Attention to a World in Crisis: Cosmopolitanism in Climate Fiction 180 List of Contributors 198 Index 202 The essays collected in this volume explore how contemporary literature imagines living between identities and locales-Nigerian and American, Turkish and German, Sudanese and European-in order to ask broad questions about the meaning of cosmopolitanism.