Representations of Migration and Diaspora in Cosmopolitical Texts
Recent discourses on globalization, cosmopolitanism, and “world literature” have underscored the movement of texts across geographical and linguistic borders. Yet the emphasis on transnational flows and cultural hybridity overlooks the continuous salience of local, regional, and national cultural forms and the reality of militarized borders for many people in the world. Whereas many immigrant texts (from novels and films to performance art and digital texts) foreground subjectivities shaped by multiple, cross-cultural allegiances, others stress the limits to border crossing and the gendering and racialization of immigrants in their host countries. This panel aims to continue conversations on cultural representations of migration by considering cosmopolitical texts that refuse celebratory approaches to hybridity and cosmopolitanism. Taking our cue from scholars such as Pheng Cheah and Bishnupriya Ghosh, who have theorized a politically-engaged and ethically-aware cosmopolitics in lieu of an elitist cosmopolitanism, we ask: How do the formal aesthetics of immigrant and diasporic narratives illuminate a cosmopolitical vision of contemporary literature? How do they represent the experiences of refugees, asylum seekers, people trafficked for forced labor, and other state-less people? How do they construct models of social justice that heed the less mobile and the war-displaced? Is the celebration of cultural hybridity at odds with the cosmopolitical purpose of such texts?
We particularly welcome papers that address the role of cultural narratives of immigration and diaspora in achieving social justice and especially the interconnection among aesthetics, ethics, and politics.