Cosmopolitanism Now: Fragmented Belonging

<p>Abstract</p> <p>This thesis reconceptualizes cosmopolitanism for the contemporary moment as fragmented belonging, critiquing and moving beyond traditional cosmopolitan frameworks grounded in universal reason, seamless integration, or coherent identity. Through close readings of Teju Cole’s <em>Open City</em> and <em>Tremor</em>, and Mohsin Hamid’s <em>The Reluctant Fundamentalist</em> and <em>Exit West</em>, this study argues that cosmopolitanism today emerges explicitly from rupture, contradiction, and ethical struggle, shaped fundamentally by conditions of displacement, empire, surveillance, and global capitalism. Engaging critical theorists such as Kwame Anthony Appiah, Homi Bhabha, Pheng Cheah, and Roland Barthes, the thesis identifies fragmented belonging as an ethically charged response to the asymmetrical realities of contemporary globalization. Cole’s narratives critique detached cosmopolitanism inherited from modernism, proposing instead an ethically accountable form of engagement rooted in historical memory, relational care, and vulnerability. Hamid dramatizes cosmopolitanism’s inherent contradictions, highlighting its structural complicities and conditional inclusivity under neoliberal capitalism. Through speculative and ambiguous narrative structures, both authors actively theorize cosmopolitan rupture as essential to the ongoing, imaginative labor of ethical engagement and relational solidarity. Ultimately, this thesis contends that cosmopolitanism, if it is to remain meaningful, must embrace its fractures not as limitations but as foundational conditions for ethical accountability, responsiveness, and critical imagination.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (M.A.)

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Year dc:date.available

2025

Author dc:creator

• Fischetti, Adriana

Contributors dc:contributor

• Robert Higney
• Vaclav Paris
• Andras Kisery

• cosmopolitanism
• literature
• literary theory
• Literature in English, North America

Repository record dc:identifier

https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cc_etds_theses/1217

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:academicworks.cuny.edu:cc_etds_theses-2303