One foot out the door : indecisive cosmopolitanism and Rabih Alameddine -

Abstract

The notions of world and war, city and outsiders, are inseparable. The suffering these indissociable splits engender is one guide to their overcoming. In a “shared” world of open and closed systems the term “cosmopolitanism” suggests a way of taking suffering-in-common seriously. This thesis considers the role of suffering in the work of Lebanese-American novelist Rabih Alameddine and approaches cosmopolitan plurality with a new hesitance, advocating for what I term “indecisive cosmopolitanism”. Indecisive cosmopolitanism registers the painful familiarity of strangers in the world, those invited in but hesitant to partake fully as well as those rendered without place. As a mode of being-in-community that questions belonging altogether, indecisive cosmopolitanism intervenes in shared being and in the structures of feeling and attachment that form community. In its hesitation, it is interpretative in a way that is necessary for actual global change. As such, it meshes well with Bruce Robbins’ observation that cosmopolitanism can shift “an already existing worldliness . . . from interpreting the world towards changing it.” Cosmopolitanism’s indecisiveness in laying claim to the world while still participating allows a painfully honest view of our flawed world that can open us to one another’s suffering enough to make a world together. The thesis proceeds as follows. The first section looks at the progression of cosmopolitan thought in relation to indecision and hesitancy. As scholars try to comprehend the means of which to form an interaction between open and closed world systems, hesitancy and negotiation with uncertainty prove to be necessary aspects. Moreover, to assert the need for indecisive cosmopolitanism, this section looks at global and local injustices as well as the manner in which they are dealt with, if dealt with at all. The second section presents a study of indecisive cosmopolitanism in the context of Rabih Alameddine’s literat