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395757

Decoloniality and Nomadic Cosmopolitanism in Mohsin Hamid’s <i>Exit West</i>

Article

Last updated: 07 Jan 2025

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Abstract

Walter Mignolo's ambitious endeavor to establish decoloniality focuses on steering clear of Western expressions of modernity and the necessity of rejecting the ‘colonial matrix of power'. Guided by Mignolo's effort to explore decolonial thinking, this article charts the relationship between decoloniality and nomadic cosmopolitanism, arguing that the latter is one manifestation of the former. The article examines Exit West (2017) by British-Pakistani novelist Mohsin Hamid as a transnational work of literature that challenges conventional Western definitions of cosmopolitanism. Hamid's Exit West offers an insight into the lives and experiences of modern-day refugees as they flee war and strive to find safety in a world with ever-tightening restrictions on borders despite its growing transnationalism. Examining the concepts of mobility, cosmopolitanism, and decoloniality, and mapping the connection between them, this article first establishes how Hamid offers a new take on cosmopolitanism via refugees forced to migrate involuntarily, by questioning conventional affiliations between cosmopolitanism on the one hand, and affluence and elitism on the other. By examining the liminal spaces where characters reside, it illustrates that occupying a liminal position potentially contributes to cosmopolitanizing a stratum of individuals that would hardly be considered cosmopolitan in the first place. It examines the concept of decoloniality as delineated by Mignolo and attempts to chart the connection between the dislocated nomadic cosmopolitanism in Hamid's novel and Mignolo's “epistemic de-linking". The article argues that nomadic cosmopolitanism is simultaneously capable of challenging standard conventions of Western cosmopolitanism, thus attaining epistemic de-linking and becoming a new manifestation of decoloniality.

DOI

10.21608/cse.2024.321872.1192

Keywords

epistemic de-linking, cosmopolitanism, Nomadism, nomadic cosmopolitanism, Liminality, Exit West, mobility, refugees, Migrants

Authors

First Name

Rana

Last Name

Elbowety

MiddleName

Mounir

Affiliation

Not Available

Email

r.elbowety@gmail.com

City

-

Orcid

-

Volume

2024

Article Issue

2

Related Issue

52233

Issue Date

2024-12-01

Receive Date

2024-09-18

Publish Date

2024-12-01

Page Start

44

Page End

60

Print ISSN

0575-1624

Online ISSN

2682-2504

Link

https://cse.journals.ekb.eg/article_395757.html

Detail API

http://journals.ekb.eg?_action=service&article_code=395757

Order

5

Type

Original Article

Type Code

738

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

Cairo Studies in English

Publication Link

https://cse.journals.ekb.eg/

MainTitle

Decoloniality and Nomadic Cosmopolitanism in Mohsin Hamid’s <i>Exit West</i>

Details

Type

Article

Created At

07 Jan 2025