MLA Template

From Elitist to Plebeian: Cosmopolitanism in V. S. Naipaul’s Fiction Weiwei Xu BA in English (Southwest China Normal University) MA in Modern and Contemporary Studies (The University of Newcastle upon Tyne) A Thesis Submitted as a Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English Faculty of Arts Macquarie University August, 2013 Table of Contents Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………i Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………………….ii Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………….1 Chapter I Unhealthy Hysteria: The Yearning for Elitist Cosmopolitanism in Miguel Street…………...34 Chapter II The Colonial Fantasy Shattered: The Fraudulence of Elitist Cosmopolitanism in Mr Stone and the Knights Companion and The Mimic Men............................................................................77 Chapter III A Self-Reflexive Reorientation: The Fall of Elitist Cosmopolitanism and the Rise of Plebeian Cosmopolitanism in In a Free State and A Bend in the River………………………………119 Chapter IV “Not Being at Home Anywhere, But Looking at Home”: The Embrace of Plebeian Cosmopolitanism in The Enigma of Arrival, Half a Life and Magic Seeds…………….......201 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………..248 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………………...255 i Abstract This thesis examines how V. S. Naipaul alters his elitist stance and consciously reorients his understanding of cosmopolitanism toward a plebeian direction represented in his fiction. It relies on new theories, critiques and empirical analyses of cosmopolitanism that have emerged and developed in cultural studies, sociology and anthropology in the past fifteen years or so. The most prominent feature of the new cosmopolitanism is its response to diversity in the increasingly hybridised global context in a counter-elitist trend. This thesis argues that the contemporary re-conceptualisation of cosmopolitanism in the cultural dimension necessitates a rereading of Naipaul’s works. It seeks to challenge the simplistic generalisation of Naipaul’s cosmopolitanism as an elitist mode of being and his advocacy of a homogenising drive toward universality, and rejects both those readings of his fiction that adopt a universalist cosmopolitan lens and those that look at them from a purely postcolonial perspective. It divides Naipaul’s fiction writing into four phases, and eight of his novels— Miguel Street, Mr Stone and the Knights Companion, The Mimic Men, In a Free State, A Bend in the River, The Enigma of Arrival, Half a Life and Magic Seeds—are examined in the chronological order. In doing so, this thesis shows how Naipaul’s textualisation of cosmopolitanism has evolved from the elitist to plebeian slant in changing historical conditions. By exploring the plebeian transnational’s homelessness or rootlessness as a consequence of the (post)colonial experience, Naipaul questions the feasibility of elitist cosmopolitanism, and finally embraces plebeian cosmopolitanism. The continual, long process of his conscious correction responsive to contemporary cultural, economic, political and social changes exemplifies a kind of new cosmopolitanism. This thesis highlights that Naipaul’s incorporation of the tension between particularism and universalism existing in the real world into his thought and outlook extends the theoretical premises of cosmopolitan discourses. ii Acknowledgements I wish to thank my supervisor, Dr. Rosemary Colmer, for her willingness to guide, help, support and have faith in me along this long and difficult journey. I am enormously grateful to my father, who introduced me to the world of literature and has helped me maintain my sanity throughout this process. He has been a constant source of guidance and encouragement in my pursuit of the academic life. I also want to thank my mother for her unstinting love, and my husband for his support. 1 Introduction V. S. Naipaul, one of the most highly regarded literary figures alive in our time, is called “a double exile, a deracinated colonial” (138) by his authorised biographer Patrick French. Indeed, Naipaul has no loyalty to his home country or ethnicity; his life is a continuing journey of exile and never-ending search for home and identity. His concerns, for the most part, remain constant as he has matured in both craft and vision. His overarching themes—man’s rootlessness, lack of acceptance, and sense of alienation and insecurity—are revealed in his treatment of the ravages of colonialism as they manifest themselves in both the First and the Third World. This thesis examines the development and change of Naipaul’s critical understanding of cosmopolitanism represented in his fiction. I will argue that Naipaul’s early novels reveal a longing for an elitist cosmopolitan mode of being, in the sense that Naipaul privileges his metropolitan, intellectual subjects. In a Free State, however, marks an important turning point. Naipaul consolidates his thematic focus on the post-Second World War migratory patterns from the Third World to the First World. He begins to rethink and reinvestigate the tragedy of the plebeian transnationals (especially those without legitimate educational or occupational background) who suffer from their supposed cosmopolitanism. In his later fiction, he recognises and praises their capabilities of developing new cosmopolitan identities and subjectivities in multiple, available ways. Naipaul does not arrive at such a realistic, pragmatic understanding of cosmopolitanism suddenly; he has continually made conscious correction in his observation of contemporary cultural, economic, political and social changes. Naipaul’s concern with the negative side effects of or threats to cosmopolitanism helps us to translate abstract cosmopolitan ideals into concrete social realities. The first part of this critical introduction to the thesis discusses some of the key debates on cosmopolitanism in history. A new cosmopolitanism that has emerged and developed in several disciplines in the past fifteen years or so will be identified. Next, why the 2 new cosmopolitanism in the cultural rather than moral or political dimension necessitates a rereading of Naipaul is explained. I then sketch why I choose to study Naipaul’s fiction, and how its realist representation extends the theoretical premises of the new cosmopolitanism. The last part of the introduction illustrates the structure of the whole thesis and the argument in each chapter. According to its European genealogy, the term “cosmopolitan” derives from the Greek words “cosmos” (the entirety of the natural world) and “polis” (city, people, citizenry), meaning “a citizen of the world”. Cosmopolitanism belongs to a conceptual history beginning with Diogenes of Sinope’s self-designation as a kosmopolites, a citizen of the world and so by implication not (or not only) a citizen of any particular city-state. Diogenes was a native of Sinope in Asia Minor, whence he had come in exile to Athens; however, “asked where he came from, he said, ‘I am a citizen of the world’” (Diogenes Laertius 65). The sentiment expressed would have been primarily antinationalist, that is, in contrast to the typical Greek man of his time, Diogenes would have been pointedly refusing to identify himself in terms of allegiance to his place of birth or to political or group affiliations. Moses Hadas suggests that it was “a rebellious reaction against every kind of coercion imposed by the community upon the individual…Diogenes’ cosmopolitanism, then, was the proud assertion of a ragged exile’s consciousness of his own worth in the face of a bourgeois society which scorned him” (108). Diogenes’ general ideas were passed on to the Cynics, who then influenced Zeno of Citium, the founder of the Stoic school of philosophy. The Stoics more fully developed the image of the world citizen, arguing that each of us dwelt in effect in two communities—the local community of our birth and the community of human argument and aspiration. The second community, in Seneca’s words, is “the one, which is great and truly common, embracing gods and men, in which we look neither to this corner nor to that, but measure the boundaries of our state by the sun” (Long and Sedley 431). The Stoics believed that “human beings are naturally social, all with the potential to be members of one shared cosmopolitan 3 community” (Sellars 133). They held that this community was the source of our most fundamental moral and social obligations. As Plutarch summarises: The much admired Republic of Zeno…is aimed at this one main point, that our household arrangements should not be based on cities or parishes, each one marked out by its own legal system, but we should regard all men as our fellow-citizens and local residents, and there should be one way of life and order, like that of a herd grazing together and nurtured by a common law. (Long and Sedley 429) The Stoics developed cosmopolitanism as a consequence of their moral philosophy, which was an attempt to create a morality based on virtue. Internal virtue should prevail over all external circumstances, and virtue could be related to a law of nature. They insisted on a certain way of perceiving our standing in the moral and social world, to establish a humanist brotherhood of all mankind and to maintain a social ethic that can be universally applied. Hierocles, for instance, took self-perception and the relation of self to others as the grounding of cosmopolitanism: Each one of us is as it were entirely encompassed by many circles…The first and closest

Load more