Dissertations and Theses
Date of Award
2025
Document Type
Thesis
Department
English
First Advisor
Robert Higney
Second Advisor
Vaclav Paris
Third Advisor
Andras Kisery
Keywords
cosmopolitanism, literature, literary theory
Abstract
Abstract
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 Open City and Tremor, and Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Exit West, 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.
Recommended Citation
Fischetti, Adriana, "Cosmopolitanism Now: Fragmented Belonging" (2025). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cc_etds_theses/1217
