34 Materiality and the Modern Cosmopolitan Novel
recognize “the materiality of shame” but also to look beyond the
particularity of the individual.^24 Indeed, an aura of shame cer-
tainly does permeate through the narrative of Rudy Williams, albeit
one that is suppressed by a smoldering sense of anger and indigna-
tion. However, while I agree that the reader’s recognition of shame
is a stimulus for our humane identification with a character like
Williams, Phillips also employs other techniques that spur us toward
a self-conscious empathic engagement with the protagonist. In par-
ticular, this is achieved rather paradoxically by Phillips depicting
the character’s inability to express his suffering in a way that the
reader would find meaningful or “sensible.” In spite of finding him-
self in deplorable and desperate circumstances, Williams doggedly
maintains the extreme, unhinged ideals we have seen him espouse
throughout his narrative—a feature that only underscores the char-
acter’s pitiful condition. The closing letter Williams writes to his
“Moma,” which is a surrogate for “Mother Africa,” presents an apt
example (p. 172). Back in solitary confinement, and with little pros-
pect of being returned soon to the general population (let alone
released from prison), Williams ends his narrative with a deliriously
optimistic letter in which he appears to have finally convinced him-
self of his fantasies about returning “home” to Africa. “Moma, do not
forget me,” he writes, “I may be far away but I shall return” (p. 172).
Of course, such paroxysms of cathexis and misplaced optimism
only serve to bring into sharper relief the squalor and hopelessness of
Williams’s situation. But they also emphasize the futility of his polit-
ical ideals, with their misguided and exclusionary “message”—one
clearly incompatible with cosmopolitan thought.
However, it bears reiterating that, as ill-judged and detrimental
to cosmopolitan conciliation as this message is, Phillips nonetheless
insists on making the reader recognize its historical contingency.
Williams’s “message” is not his own, but is rather a poorly con-
structed and often ill-fitting collage of various texts and discourses
that converge around the theme of African American exploitation
and its political ramifications. For B é n é dict Ledent, the chapter
containing Williams’s narrative (entitled “Cargo Rap”) is a conspic-
uously intertextual portion of the novel that references a number of
“vernacular genres, like rap,” as well as to “more scholarly texts, like