The Aporia Of Cosmopolitanism In Kamila Shamsie's Burnt Shadows

Kamila Shamsie(1973-)is a contemporary British-Pakistani writer who enjoys equal reputation with Mohsin Hamid(1971-),though in China the latter is relatively more well-known,for Shamsie's works have been less explored.Recently,however,Shamsie has won a number of international awards,which establish her world reputation.Her writing usually focuses on the connection between post-colonial Pakistan and the outside world,positioning individual lives in vital historical moments.Her well-received novel Burnt Shadows(2009)draws a broad literary map which brings together Japan,India,Pakistan,Afghanistan,America and other geographical locations.Critics have noticed in general the novel's various thematic concerns such as transnationalism,globalization and cosmopolitanism,but they have failed to highlight their interrelations without further exploring Shamsie's ideological position as well as what her cosmopolitan ideas may imply.This thesis will build up a critical framework based on the cosmopolitan theories of Kwame Appiah,Martha Nussbaum and Homi Bhabha in a postcolonial perspective,looking into different vital historical moments in the novel which suggest the aporia of cosmopolitanism.Cosmopolitanism gets mired in aporia in national politics,cultural hybridity and global ethics.In national politics,cosmopolitanism controversially contains a transcendence of nation-states.Faced with the powerlessness of cosmopolitan individuals in the wars,such transcendence cannot be realized on the individual level.The antagonism between cosmopolitanism and nationalism is not that absolute,for the latter also plays an active role in the anti-colonial struggle.Patriotism eases their tension,but it also has the danger of descending to exclusionary nationalism in times of anxiety.The absence of law in violent moments of the Third World exposes the insufficient preconditions for cosmopolitan citizenship,and the performative national identity is restricted by the pedagogical mode.In cultural hybridity,the problem of homogeneity,impossible assimilation and cultural imperialism impedes the pursuit of cosmopolitanism.Religion is not undoubtedly antagonistic with cosmopolitanism,it is not Islam but political interests in the veil of religiosity that makes cosmopolitanism fail.Hybrid language is another significant cultural pattern of the novel,without cultural translation,the bottom-up endeavor towards a vernacular cosmopolitanism is extremely difficult.In global ethics,shared vulnerability under violence reveals human's elementary interdependence.However,owing to the different allocation,it cannot be a reliable guarantee of cosmopolitan ethics.The refusal of interstitial and unhomely subjectivity with self foreignness makes the cosmopolitan subject reluctant to come.And taking the ethical responsibility for the Other's life turns out to be a fatal choice due to the limit of ethical imagination and the life hunting of biopolitics.Cosmopolitanism being trapped in aporia in Burnt Shadows impels people to reexamine the reconciliation and incompatibility between cosmopolitanism and postcolonial society,as well as the strict preconditions for cosmopolitanism,and conjure up a new exist for world peace.Nevertheless,such aporia does not deprive cosmopolitanism from its laudable intention of planetary conviviality,thus what we need to do is to understand this ideal with an open mind,break the boundary between self and the Other,and accumulate sharing values through constant communication in the spirit of cosmopolitanism.