Interrogating Cosmopolitanism and The Stranger in Tendai Huchu’s The Maestro, The Magistrate & The Mathematician (2015)

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_misc/mj.20226850

Keywords:

cosmopolitanism, rhythm, cosmopolitan, stranger, urban space, community

Abstract

This article analyses Tendai Huchu’s novel The Maestro, The Magistrate & The Mathematician (2015) in the light of cosmopolitan theory, drawing from Ulrich Beck’s conceptualisation of the cosmopolitan society and Vince Marotta’s notion of the figure of the cosmopolitan stranger. Urban space theory and Henri Lefebvre’s Rhythmanalysis is also discussed. This work focuses on the main characters in the novel in order to question the validity of some of the characteristics attributed to the cosmopolitan stranger, principally their ability to transcend standpoint epistemologies. It addresses the characters’ common struggle to re-evaluate their identity in the new neoliberal capitalist context of Edinburgh in which they find themselves, as well as their search for belonging in the new community and the creation of a new home. The article also explores the potential of walking the city as a mechanism to reconcile identity conflicts and respond to the anxiety that the city generates —connecting internal time, memories and the body with external time and space— and contrasts it with the experience of running. It is contended that the novel resists the imposition of a definite meaning, portraying the cosmopolitan strangers as nuanced individuals, while also exploring the possibility of failure of the cosmopolitan stranger.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Ahmed, Sara. 2006. Queer Phenomenology. Durham and London: Duke U.P.

Amin, Ash. 2012. Land of Strangers. Cambridge, Malden: Polity Press.

Bastida-Rodríguez, Patricia. 2019. “Afropolitan in their Own Way? Writing and Self-identification in Aminatta Forna and Chika Unigwe”. In Durán-Almarza, Emilia María, Ananya Jahanara Kabid and Carla Rodríguez González (eds.): 23-37.

Beck, Ulrich. 2002. “The Cosmopolitan Society and Its Enemies”. Theory, Culture & Society 1-2 (19): 17-44. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/026327640201900101

Delanty, Gerard. 2010. Community. Abingdon: Routledge.

Delanty, Gerard. 2012. “Introduction. The Emerging Field of Cosmopolitan Studies”. In Delanty, Gerard (ed.) Routledge Handbook of Cosmopolitan Studies. Oxon: Routledge: 1-8.

Durán-Almarza, Emilia María, Ananya Jahanara Kabid and Carla Rodríguez González. (eds.) 2019. Debating the Afropolitan. London and New York: Routledge.

Durán-Almarza, Emilia María, Ananya Jahanara Kabid and Carla Rodríguez González. 2019. “Introduction: Debating the Afropolitan”. In Durán-Almarza, Emilia María, Ananya Jahanara Kabid and Carla Rodríguez González (eds.): 1-8.

Fraser, Nancy. 2013. Fortunes of Feminism. From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis. London, New York: Verso.

Germann Molz, Jennie. 2011. “Cosmopolitanism and Consumption”. In Rovisco, Maria and Magdalena Nowicka (eds.) The Ashgate Research Companion to Cosmopolitanism. Farnham: Ashgate.

Gilroy, Paul. 2004. After Empire. Melancholia or Convivial Culture? Oxfordshire: Routledge.

Homberg-Schramm, Jessica. 2018. “Colonised by Wankers”. Postcolonialism and Contemporary Scottish Fiction. Cologne: Modern Academic Publishing.

Huchu, Tendai. 2015. The Maestro, The Magistrate & The Mathematician. Cardigan: Parthian.

Jackson, Jeanne-Marie. 2016. “An Interview with Tendai Huchu”. <http://www.bookslut.com/features/2016_03_021392.php>. Accessed November 24, 2020.

Jackson, Jeanne-Marie. 2018. “Plurality in Question: Zimbabwe and the Agonistic African Novel”. Novel: A Forum of Fiction 2 (51): 339-361. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/00295132-6846192

Lefebvre, Henri. 2013. Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Lyall, Scott. 2016. “Preface: In Search of Community”. In Lyall, Scott (ed.) Community in Modern Scottish Literature. Leiden, Boston: Brill, Rodopi: vii-xiii.

Marotta, Vince. 2010. “The Cosmopolitan Stranger”. In van Hooft, Stan and Wim Vandekerckhove (eds.) Questioning Cosmopolitanism. Dordrecht, Heidelberg, London, New York: Springer: 105-120.

Marotta, Vince. 2017. Theories of the Stranger. Debates on Cosmopolitanism, Identity and Cross-Cultural Encounters. Oxon: Routledge. E-book.

Moolla, Fatima Fiona. 2018. “Travelling Home: Diasporic Dis-locations of Space and Place in Tendai’s Huchu’s The Maestro, The Magistrate and the Mathematician”. The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 2 (56): 1-18. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0021989418802609

Nava, Mica. 2002. “Cosmopolitan Modernity: Everyday Imaginaries and the Register of Difference”. Theory, Culture & Society 1-2 (19): 81-99. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/026327640201900104

Nussbaum, Martha C. 2019. The Cosmopolitan Tradition. A Noble but Flawed Ideal. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard U.P.

Primorac, Ranca and Robert Muponde. 2005. “Introduction: Writing Against Blindness”. Primorac, Ranca and Robert Muponde (eds.) Versions of Zimbabwe: New Approaches to Literature and Culture. Zimbabwe: Weaver Press. E-book.

Schoene, Berthold. 2007. “Introduction: Post-Devolution Scottish Writing”. In Schoene, Berthold (ed.) The Edinburgh Companion to Contemporary Scottish Literature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh U.P.: 1-4.

Selasi, Taiye. 2005. “Bye-Bye Babar”. The Lip Magazine (March 3). <http://thelip.robertsharp.co.uk/?p=76>. Accessed November 4, 2020.

Solnit, Rebecca. 2001. Wanderlust: A History of Walking. New York, London, Auckland, Middlesex: Penguin Books. E-book.

Vieten, Ulrike M. 2016. Gender and Cosmopolitanism in Europe: A Feminist Perspective. London and New York: Routledge. E-book.

Whyte, Cristopher. 1998. “Masculinities in Contemporary Scottish Fiction”. Forum for Modern Language Studies 3 (34): 274-285. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/XXXIV.3.274

Downloads

Published

2022-06-13

How to Cite

Riaño Alonso, C. (2022). Interrogating Cosmopolitanism and The Stranger in Tendai Huchu’s The Maestro, The Magistrate & The Mathematician (2015). Miscelánea: A Journal of English and American Studies, 65, 127–147. https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_misc/mj.20226850

Issue

Section

ARTICLES: Literature, film and cultural studies