Negative Cosmopolitanism: Cultures and Politics of World Citizenship after Globalization

417 Pages·2017·6.25 MB·English

by  Eddy Kent

Negative Cosmopolitanism

NEGATIVE
COSMOPOLITANISM
Cultures and Politics of World
Citizenship after Globalization
Edited by EDDY KENT
and TERRI TOMSKY
McGill-Queen’s University Press
Montreal & Kingston ∙ London ∙ Chicago
© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2017
“American Good Life, the Bandung Spirit, and a Human Rights
Record” by Crystal Parikh also appears in Writing Human Rights: The
Political Imaginaries of Writers of Color (University of Minnesota
Press, 2017) © The Regents of University of Minnesota
ISBN 978-0-7735-5096-4 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-7735-5097-1 (paper)
ISBN 978-0-7735-5204-3 (ePDF)
ISBN 978-0-7735-5205-0 (ePUB)
Legal deposit fourth quarter 2017
Bibliothèque nationale du Québec
Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free
(100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free
McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the
Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also
acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada
through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Negative cosmopolitanism : cultures and politics of world citizenship
after globalization / edited by Eddy Kent and Terri Tomsky.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-0-7735-5096-4 (cloth). – ISBN 978-0-7735-5097-1 (paper). –
ISBN 978-0-7735-5204-3 (ePDF). – ISBN 978-0-7735-5205-0 (ePUB)
1. Cosmopolitanism – History. 2. Globalization – History.
3. Capitalism – History. 4. Cosmopolitanism in literature.
5. Globalization in literature. 6. Capitalism in literature.
I. Kent, Eddy, 1978–, editor II. Tomsky, Terri, 1975–, editor
JZ1308.N44 2017 306 C2017-904047-2
C2017-904048-0
Set in 10.5/13.5 Warnock Pro with Newslab
Book design & typesetting by Garet Markvoort, zijn digital
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ∙ vii
Introduction: Negative Cosmopolitanism ∙ EDDy KENt aND
tErrI tomSKy ∙ 3
Part One · Cosmopolitan Histories
1 American Good Life, the Bandung Spirit, and a Human Rights
Record ∙ CryStal ParIKh ∙ 29
2 Sui Generous: Examining the Object of Organized Philanthropy
through the MacArthur Foundation ∙ GEorDIE mIllEr ∙ 43
3 Underwriting Cosmopolitanism: Insurance, Slavery, and
Confidence Games in Herman Melville’s “Benito Cereno” and
The Confidence-Man ∙ DENNIS mISChKE ∙ 58
4 Fractured Mediations: Eur/Asian Vernacular
Cosmopolitanisms ∙ SNEJa GUNEw ∙ 74
5 Disaster Cosmopolitanism: Imaginations of Comparison in
Kamila Shamsie’s Burnt Shadows ∙ lIam o’loUGhlIN ∙ 91
Part Two · Cosmopolitan Labour
6 Cosmopolitanism from Below: Oil Capitalism, Informality, and
Citizenship in Nigeria ∙ PaUl UGor ∙ 107
7 Representing Migrant Labour in Contemporary Britain:
Hsiao-Hung Pai’s Chinese Whispers and Marina Lewycka’s
Strawberry Fields/Two Caravans ∙ PamEla mcCallUm ∙ 130
8 Cosmopolitan Creoles and Neoliberal Mobility in Annalee
Davis’s On the Map ∙ mElISSa StEPhENS ∙ 149
9 Reproductive Politics, the Negative Present, and Cosmopolitan
Futurity ∙ hEathEr latImEr ∙ 172
Part Three · Cosmopolitan Communities
10 Standing Outside the Law: Prostitution-Free Zones and the
Power of Property ∙ JUlIaNE CollarD ∙ 187
11 “Internal Racisms” of the Yakuza-eiga ∙ mIKE DIlloN ∙ 200
12 Embedded Cosmopolitanism: Tolstoyan and Goethean Ideas
of World Literature during the Two World Wars ∙ DINa
GUSEJNova ∙ 217
13 At Home in the World of the Wound: Feral Cosmopolitics in the
Red Riding Quartet ∙ marK SImPSoN ∙ 243
14 Homiletic Realism ∙ tImothy BrENNaN ∙ 263
Afterword: Incipient Cosmopolitanisms ∙ PEtEr NyErS ∙ 283
Notes ∙ 291
Bibliography ∙ 345
Contributors ∙ 385
Index ∙ 389
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The essays in this collection emerge from papers presented at a confer-
ence on the topic of negative cosmopolitanism, held in October 2012.
That conference was made possible through the support of the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Alexander
von Humboldt Foundation, the Trudeau Foundation, the Art Gallery
of Alberta, and the University of Alberta. The stimulating – and often
contentious – conversations held during those two days, among over
fifty presenters and hundreds of registered attendees, convinced us of
the need for this volume. We thank the contributors for their patience
in seeing this book through to its publication. It has been a long journey!
On behalf of all the contributors, we would like to thank all of the
people whose eyes have passed over various parts of this manuscript
during its composition. In particular, we owe a debt of gratitude to
Mark Abley, our editor at McGill-Queen’s University Press, who scru-
pulously stuck by the project and supported us all the way. We would
also like to thank the press’s three anonymous readers for the serious-
ness and care that they took in reviewing the manuscript. We particu-
larly appreciate the constructive feedback and detailed specificity of
each report, which helped shape this final volume.
Assembling an edited collection, we have learned, is a complicated
process and we would like to acknowledge our research assistants,
Liam Young and Kristina Vyskocil. Liam was our proverbial cat-herder,
overseeing the formatting of each essay into the mQUP style; Kristina
joined the project at a later stage, reviewing the manuscript and scour-
ing the footnotes to ensure the integrity of our works cited. We are very
grateful for their work and any errors that might remain are wholly
our responsibility. We are also grateful to the Faculty of Arts at the
University of Alberta who, through the Roger Smith Undergraduate
Research Award, enabled John Yoon to join our project and help de-
velop a preliminary bibliography as we began writing our introduction
to the collection.
During the project, we have relied on our community of colleagues,
students, and support staff at the University of Alberta. We gratefully
acknowledge the Kule Institute of Advanced Study, whose generous Re-
search Cluster Grant helped fund our two research assistants. Thanks,
too, are extended to Susan Howard, the research administrator in the
Department of English and Film Studies. Sue’s experience helped us
navigate the sometimes byzantine internal and external financial re-
porting systems as well as various logistical challenges that came with
the development of this collection. Our colleagues here in Edmonton
have been relentless in their encouragement for this project but a spe-
cial mention must go to Imre Szeman, Canada Research Chair in Cul-
tural Studies, who has served as our mentor, right from the moment
we began thinking about organizing the conference. Imre has been a
constant source of knowledge and friendship to us: this book would
not exist without his support.
A version of Sneja Gunew’s chapter, “Fractured Mediations: Eur/
Asian Vernacular Cosmopolitanisms,” first appeared in her monograph,
Post-Multicultural Writers as Neo-cosmopolitan Mediators, published
by Anthem Press in 2017. It is reprinted here by kind permission of
Anthem Press. A version of Mike Dillon’s chapter, “‘Internal Racisms’
of the Yakuza-eiga,” appeared in Studies in the Humanities 39, no. 1–2
(2012): 193–232, as “The Immigrant and the Yakuza: Gangscapes in
Miike Takashi’s DOA.” It is published here by kind permission of the
journal. A version of Crystal Parikh’s chapter, “American Good Life,
the Bandung Spirit, and a Human Rights Record,” also appears in her
2017 monograph, Writing Human Rights: The Political Imaginaries of
Writers of Color, published by the University of Minnesota Press at the
same time as this volume.
Finally, as co-editors, each of us has a network of friends and distant
family who have supported us through this and all our other academic
endeavours. However, we are especially thankful for the child-care
professionals at Edmonton’s University Infant Toddler Centre, who
took care of our children, Felix and Zara, and whose labour was indis-
pensable to freeing up the time needed to work on a book of this scope.
viii ACKNOwLEDgMENTS
Negative Cosmopolitanism