76 Materiality and the Modern Cosmopolitan Novel
human subjectivity, the cosmopolitan view of the universal subject
requires a historico-social totality to “break through,” in the first
place, to give that subjectivity its purchase.^98
In my analysis of A Distant Shore , I observe how Phillips deploys
two narratives that have similar thematic traits of exile and deraci-
nation but converge at the same space and time. I argue that one of
the salient effects of both narratives is to critique static and exclusive
notions of belonging. Phillips partially achieves this by actively sub-
verting the idea of “home,” appropriating the signifier in a manner
that advances a more fluid, more inclusive, and more cosmopolitan
understanding of the concept. But it also involves Phillips explor-
ing and interrogating the very impulses and psychological processes
that sustain it. In this sense, the novel complements the critical cos-
mopolitan vision that Phillips encourages in Higher Ground and
The Nature of Blood. Whereas the latter novels provoke the reader
into adopting a cosmopolitan vision that can “rupture” the fabric
of history and assert distance from exclusionary modes of seeing, A
Distant Shore encourages the reader to dismantle some of the seman-
tic constructs that sustain such exclusionary forms of viewing in the
f i r s t p l a c e.