Skip to main content
Kent Academic Repository

Utopian Cosmopolitanism and the Conscious Pariah: Harare, Ramallah, Cairo

Rooney, Caroline R. (2011) Utopian Cosmopolitanism and the Conscious Pariah: Harare, Ramallah, Cairo. Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 46 (1). pp. 139-155. ISSN 0021-9894. E-ISSN 1741-6442. (doi:10.1177/0021989410396038) (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:54979)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.
Official URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0021989410396038

Abstract

This article entertains the possibility that new, locally-embedded cosmopolitanisms, critical of the violence inflicted by various forms of colonialism and globalization, are not just a matter of locus, or location, or topos, but also a question of the utopian. I begin with some autobiographically based observations related to a certain barely-documented social formation I witnessed as a young woman in colonial Rhodesia, and develop the scope of analysis by relating the notion of utopian solidarity among pariahs to cultural imaginings of three differently cosmopolitan cities. It will be proposed that what is at stake in defining utopian cosmopolitanism is a certain cultural metaphori city (a term that will be gradually explicated), encapsulated here in the process of tracing submerged similarities in the cultural histories of Harare, Ramallah and Cairo, and engaging with the work of Dambudzo Marechera, Mourid Barghouti, Alaa Al Aswany and Ahdaf Soueif.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1177/0021989410396038
Uncontrolled keywords: Dambudzo Marechera; Mourid Barghouti; Alaa Al Aswany; Ahdaf Soueif; utopian cosmopolitanism; pariah elitism; metaphoricity
Subjects: P Language and Literature > PE English philology and language
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Arts and Humanities > School of English
Depositing User: Kate Smith
Date Deposited: 14 Apr 2016 11:28 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 10:22 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/54979 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

  • Depositors only (login required):

Total unique views for this document in KAR since July 2020. For more details click on the image.