Materiality and the Modern Cosmopolitan Novel

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190 Materiality and the Modern Cosmopolitan Novel


not to say that the two are incompatible). Indeed, the conventional
Marxist view of cosmopolitanism is strongly skeptical, viewing it
as a “bourgeois” outgrowth of capitalism.^5 This view is too dismis-
sive of the broad scope and ramifications of cosmopolitan thought,
which retains the capacity to be applied in the interests of material
sociopolitical equality. Nonetheless, Benita Parry is correct to doubt
that cosmopolitanism is a viable “theoretical position,” best suited to
promote “a political allegiance grounded in class affiliation and anti-
imperialist partnership.”^6 Cosmopolitanism certainly is unfit to play
this role; but this is because if it defined itself as a system reserved
for the working class, it would place restrictions on its universal ori-
entation and reach.
This fundamental quality of cosmopolitanism is alluded to in the
third chapter, in which I argue that Roth’s American Trilogy avoids
explicitly endorsing any particular ideological position. Certainly,
the novels provoke the reader into drawing connections between the
individual and societ y in ways that resonate strongly with Parr y (and
Marx’s) materialism. However, these connections are also imbued
with cosmopolitan priorities of social inclusiveness, egalitarian-
ism, and the suspicion of rigid notions of collective identity (such
as class). While I argue that Roth’s application of a modified form
of tragedy demonstrates (through provocative silence) the necessity
of a material egalitarianism in cosmopolitan thought, I also indicate
that the thematic and stylistic features of his novels simultaneously
foreground a prioritization of human singularity. What is more, this
is a priority that is also exhibited with particular force in Phillips’s
and Coetzee’s novels.
As is shown, this equation relies heavily on the role of defamil-
iarization, estrangement, and other distancing techniques. This is a
link that ought to be given additional attention here as the discussion
is brought to a close. All three novelists analyzed in the study place a
special emphasis on those elusive, ephemeral, seemingly indefinable,
and occasionally unappealing elements of human beings. Roth’s
contribution to this cause is characterized by an insistence on the
inscrutability of human subjects, who cannot be neatly contained
by the narratives imposed on them by writers such as Zuckerman,
or by themselves, as in the case (particularly) of Ira Ringold, whose

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