Globalisation and the Cosmopolitan Novel: an Analysis of the Later Novels by J
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by ScholarBank@NUS GLOBALISATION AND THE COSMOPOLITAN NOVEL: AN ANALYSIS OF THE LATER NOVELS BY J. M. COETZEE AND KAZUO ISHIGURO CYRIL WONG YIT MUN Master of Arts (English Literature), NUS THESIS SUBMITTED IN PART FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (ENGLISH LITERATURE), NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE 2012 “This dissertation represents my own work and due acknowledgement is given whenever information is derived from other sources. No part of this dissertation has been or is being concurrently submitted for any other qualification at any other university. Signed …….……………………………” Acknowledgement My appreciation to Gilbert Yeoh for his guidance, as well as to my panel of examiners and friends, Sim Wai-Chew, John Phillips and Walter Lim, for their insights. Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction 1 Chapter 2: Naïve Cosmopolitanism 18 Chapter 3: Unconsolable Cosmopolitanism 61 Chapter 4: Positive Cosmopolitanism 112 Chapter 5: Minority Cosmopolitanism 159 Chapter 6: Conclusion 201 Works Cited 205 Works Consulted 213 Summary Unlike J. M. Coetzee’s and Kazuo Ishiguro’s past works—the former engaged with themes of colonialism and engaged frequently with life in a politically-troubled South-Africa, while Ishiguro created Japanese protagonists who found themselves unable to move on from the historically-traumatic past—the later novels by these authors not only provide a critical and aesthetic reflection on the complex political realities, inherent contradictions and ethical quandaries within perceived conceptions of global culture, they also reflect on what is at stake within a cosmopolitan position, particularly with regards to the tensions between local affiliations and global responsibilities. My purpose in analysing their recent works is to discover what it has meant for these authors to write a cosmopolitan novel and how the writing of such a work grapples with a critical consciousness of states of multiple belonging. Chapter 1: Introduction J. M. Coetzee’s past works were engaged with themes of colonialism and with life in a politically-troubled South-Africa, while Kazuo Ishiguro’s earlier novels concentrated on Japanese protagonists who found themselves unable to move on from a war-torn past. Unlike these previous narratives, the later novels of these authors do not only provide an urgent reflection on the increasingly complex political realities, inherent contradictions and ethical quandaries within perceived conceptions of global culture, they also serve to reflect on what is at stake within a cosmopolitan position, particularly with regard to its critical consciousness of states of multiple belonging or the seemingly irresolvable tensions between local affiliations and global responsibilities. My purpose in analysing their later works is to discover what it has meant for these authors to write a cosmopolitan novel and how the writing of such a work—to use Katherine Ann Stanton’s words—“challenges one of our everyday assertions about living globally: that we cannot do enough” (23). The starting point and the wider context of my interest in the cosmopolitan novel is globalisation. Nevertheless, like Stanton, I wish to refer to the novels as cosmopolitan fictions instead of global fictions, so as to engage with “[the] contestory power of this genre that global, in its attachment to . seemingly inevitable processes [of globalisation], may not at first convey” (23). Because of the growing pervasiveness of globalisation, a critical engagement with its effects via the notion of cosmopolitanism becomes increasingly necessary. Cosmopolitanism can, at first sight, be interpreted, as suggested by Bruce Robbins, as “a reality of (re)attachment, multiple attachment, or attachment at a distance” (1998, 3) that is created as a result of globalisation. Defining globalisation as a concept, Fredric Jameson has written about how it “falls outside the established academic disciplines” and is “the intellectual property of no specific field, yet which seems to concern politics and economics in immediate ways, but just as immediately culture and sociology, not to speak of information and the media, or ecology, or consumerism and daily life” (“Preface” xi). But I think all of us can agree that globalisation is the consequence of “the intensification of international trade, 1 fiscal and technology transfer, and labour migration . and the rise of global hybrid cultures from modern mass migration, consumerism, and mass communications in the past two decades [which] have combined to create an interdependent world” (Cheah 2006, 20). The interconnected reality of globalisation seems to take on the sense of a greater urgency in our present time when, as Jameson puts it, compared to the past, “current world networks are only different in degree and not in kind” (“Notes on a Globalisation” 54), a fact that can be illustrated by the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in 2009. At this summit, British prime minister Gordon Brown had this to say to rally the world’s participation in confronting a current global recession, “This is a time . for the world to come together as one.”1 We are all in it together; we must now be aware of this more than ever before. Like the protagonists in the novels discussed here, we are constantly reminded of our subjective connections to a larger globalised world. If the rallying emphasis on the growing importance of these connections within the context of globalisation might seem abstract, heavy-handed or contrived, I would suggest that cosmopolitanism then becomes a way by which we might critically and convincingly confront such connections. At this point, I would like to provide a short history of cosmopolitanism as well as to review it for my purposes here. The term, “cosmopolitanism,” has been used to describe a wide variety of views in moral and socio-political philosophy. A central, anti- parochial aspect shared by most cosmopolitan views is the idea that all human beings, regardless of political affiliations, do, in fact, belong to a single community, and that such a universal community should be cultivated. The idea of cosmopolitanism began as early as the fourth century B. C., when the Cynic, Diogenes of Sinope, radically pronounced that he was “a citizen of the world” (Laertius 1925, 65), as opposed to just the individual city-state which represented the broadest sense of a social identity in Greece at the time. Etymologically, the concept is derived from “kosmopolitês,” a coupling of the Greek words for “world” and “citizen” (Cheah 1998, 22). Vinay Dharwadker writes with regard to the cosmopolitanism 1 Quoted in The Guardian 30 Jan. 2009. 1 Dec. 2009 <http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jan/30/gordonbrown-davos> 2 practised by the Stoics, as well as the early Buddhists, that the concept had already been “a validation of inclusive, egalitarian heterogeneity, of the tolerance of difference and otherness” (2001, 7). Dharwadker’s more recent and heterogeneous version of cosmopolitanism is not as well known, however, as the dominant view of how cosmopolitanism was conceived by the Greek philosophers of antiquity, as put forth by Martha Nussbaum. Inspired by Kant who had been drawn to the Cynic/Stoic conception of cosmopolitanism, Nussbaum has emphasised a world-community of human beings and promoted a universal ethic that “urges us to recognise the equal, and unconditional, worth of all human beings, a worth grounded in reason and moral capacity, rather than on traits that depend on fortuitous natural or social arrangements” (2002, 31). But her ethical imperative to imagine a world-citizenship that transcends the irrational forces of patriotism and xenophobia has been easily criticised for promoting a “boastful universalism” and “an unjustifiable pride in our ability to reason our way to universally applicable moral and political standards.”2 Inspired by the Stoicism derived from Seneca, Cicero and translations of Marcus Aurelius,3 Immanuel Kant wrote in the eighteenth century that the “cosmopolitan condition” was a necessity linking nations on the grounds that, in a modern age, “a violation of rights in one part of the world is felt everywhere” (1991, 107- 108). It is important to note that Kant’s notion of cosmopolitanism did not rise out of a vacuum. There has been historical evidence, according to Margaret Jacob, which suggests that in the eighteenth century, with the development and growth of urbanity in Europe, the cosmopolitan was becoming a viable ideal because, even amid nationalistic rivalries, select enclaves were flourishing where religious and national boundaries were habitually crossed and the beginnings of an expansive social experience were being established. The cosmopolitan ideal proclaimed by an Enlightenment writer like Kant matured because of the richness and diversity of such experiences during his time: “Cities were becoming the natural habitat of the cosmopolitan” (Jacob 2006, 13). Recent developments of globalisation in the 2 Yack, Bernard. “Cosmopolitan Humility.” Boston Review. Vol. 20, No. 1 (Feb./Mar. 1995). 1 Dec. 2009 <http://bostonreview.net/BR20.1/yack.html>. 3 Lutz-Bachmann, Matthias. Perpetual Peace: Essays on Kant's Cosmopolitan Ideal. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997. 53. 3 1980s and ’90s have led to the revival of interest in such cosmopolitan visions defined by Kant, particularly his “accounts of global civil society and the international public