Materiality and the Modern Cosmopolitan Novel

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116 Materiality and the Modern Cosmopolitan Novel


argument and detract from its aesthetic appeal. The utterances “I
hope” in the first sentence, and the even more inelegant “say I, who
am, however in no position to dictate what the point of the story is”
in the second, are particularly indicative in this respect. Functioning
as linguistic hedges that qualify her position, they also potentially
weaken the rhetorical strength of her argument, suggesting that she
is not completely certain of what she wants to say.
These oratory and rhetorical “deficiencies” are also noted explic-
itly by Costello’s son, John, who informs us—while listening to
a later speech—that she “does not have a good delivery” (p. 63).
John’s wife, Norma, is more caustic in her criticism, declaring that
Costello “is rambling” and “confused” (pp. 63–75). However, for
Norma, there are larger problems associated with Costello’s lecture.
Being a doctor of philosophy who is active in research, Norma is
well-versed in the kind of arguments put forward by her mother-in-
law and is quick to dismiss the latter’s “philosophizing” as “shallow
relativism that impresses freshmen” (p. 91). She puts forward some
compelling and eloquent counter-arguments to Costello’s “philoso-
phizing”; and a particular point she persistently refutes is the latter’s
repudiation of Western philosophy’s prioritization of reason. As
alluded to above, this stance is encapsulated in Costello’s critique
of the Cartesian cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am) phrase,
with its “empty feel” and machine-like lack of emotional awareness
(pp. 78–79). For Norma, Costello’s position is inherently contra-
dictory because to argue that reason is ultimately overrated in the
scheme of things is itself an act of reasoning. As she tells her fraught
and fatigued husband after the lecture, “There is no position out-
side of reason where you can stand and lecture about reason and
pass judgment on reason” (p. 93). Such an attack on Costello’s argu-
ments does indeed appear logical and therefore convincing, partic-
ularly given the latter’s rhetorical shortcomings and “deficiencies”
mentioned above.
However, as Stephen Mulhall informs us, Norma’s critique misses
an important nuance in Costello’s thinking, which draws a distinc-
tion “between reason as such and particular modes or inflections of
reason.”^63 Reason, she tells her audience, “looks suspiciously to me
like the being of human thought; worse than that, like the being

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