Cosmopolitan Vision of Home, Subjectivity 23strategies echo more conventional literary procedures of defamiliar-
ization and estrangement. I then proceed to show how these strat-
egies encourage the reader to adopt a “critical” cosmopolitan view
that is in tune with the self-reflexive mode of empathy formulated
by Emmanuel Levinas. In pursuing this task, the materialist formu-
lations of Michel Foucault and Pierre Macherey are highly useful
and help illuminate the manner in which a critical form of empathy
complements a historically conscious cosmopolitan vision.
For both Foucault and Macherey, the notion of subjectivity is
closely associated with the historical moment in which the term is
applied. Of the two, Foucault is perhaps better known for histor-
icizing the emergence of socially agreed-upon conceptions of self
(particularly those such as madness) and articulating the ways in
which these are connected with the application of repressive polit-
ical power.^1 However, Foucault’s ideas on subjectivity are far from
straightforwardly historically deterministic. To be sure, he takes
pains to stress the considerable influence that historical forces have
over the individual, particularly those relating to socioeconomic
power and the institutions through which it is exercised. However,
Foucault’s theoretical conception of subjectivity is further refined
by highlighting the individual’s struggle against such structures
of power. I therefore consider Foucault’s idea of subjectivity to be,
albeit in a limited sense, an “abstraction,” instead of a purely histor-
ically determined view of the individual. In an essay on subjectivity
and its relationship with power, he depicts the individual struggling
to assert a sense of freedom and a “right to be different” from within
the conceptual confines of the historical moment in which it finds
itself.^2 A lthough the individual’s struggle for subjectivity is of course
immediately tied to the specific material conditions peculiar to their
historical moment, Foucault argues that it is also “transversal,” in
that its characteristics are not just to be found in a single historical,
social, or political context, but potentially in multiple locales.^3
This “transversal” conception of subjectivity quite clearly speaks
to the universal orientation toward humanity that undergirds the
cosmopolitan values of inclusiveness, conciliation, and egalitarian-
ism. However, Foucault’s descriptions of subjectivity also appear to
find accord with Phillips’s personal views. Speaking in an interview