Border Crossing And Connection Making

Cosmopolitanism,the understanding of oneself as citizen of the world,explores the possibilities of building up universal connections and taking responsibilities in a worldwide scale.The tension at the core lies between the local and global:that is,the impulse to transcend national,ethnic,and linguistic boundaries and the vernacular persistence in worshiping rootedness and collectivity by grounding fraternal affiliations within a particular local culture.This thesis argues that Zadie Smith’s On Beauty displays a cosmopolitan vision which is still in process of becoming.Specifically,the novel questions the national and cultural boundaries by dramatizing a hybridized metropolis;through the characters’ failed trials as well as partial successes,it also imagines the ways to build up connections across the border which forms an active dialogue between literary imagination and social reality.Centering on border crossing and connection making,this thesis focuses on two major issues:to begin with,it reexamines the boundaries that separate people apart and explores the premise of cosmopolitan visions.Chapter one questions the concept of nation as well as national identity by exposing their imaginary natures which are not innate or natural.Moreover,it argues that On Beauty displays an outlook of hybridized inter-communities against the backdrop of globalization,in which people are heterogeneous and have been unprecedentedly codependent on each other.The local-global dichotomy is blurred,thus making it an unavoidable and necessary phenomenon to interact with the alterity.Nonetheless,hybridity does not necessarily lead to a constructive relationship.The second and third chapters,therefore,focus on the efforts to establish cosmopolitan connections and highlight multiple tensions in attempts to realize it.Chapter two looks into the problematic engagements by pointing out the wrongness both in naive imaginations that neglect complex social reality and the exploitative modes based on self-centeredness.In comparison,chapter three explores approaches to positive cosmopolitan vision with special attention to "beauty" as a trope.Its universal appeals drive people together,and the right understanding of beauty also leads to an intersubjective relationship by acknowledging the differences of each individual.I argue that cosmopolitanism is a process and always requires partial affiliation and endless negotiations.Important as the identification issue of "who I am" is,I put more emphasis on"what we should do" in practice which is targeted at futuristic concerns.I assert that cosmopolitanism is in a state of becoming that refuses to be categorized as being only one thing or another,and that global commitment is not only urgent but also practical and promising,which is revealed in the narrative representations of a desire for a convivial culture and non-fragmented heterogeneous world that cannot be subjected to imperial monologue.