Cosmopolitanism and Tragic Silence 173filth. More poverty. Schooling nonexistent. Schools a disaster. On
every corner dropouts” (p. 345). Murray Ringold echoes similar sen-
timents in I Married a Communist when he describes Newark of the
1960s as “now a poor black city full of problems” (p. 316). While it
is clear that not all the problems identified above could be blamed
solely on the outsourcing of Newark’s industries, the notion that
deindustrialization did not play a role would require an elaborate
feat of counter-intuitive argumentation.
Levov’s worldview therefore appears to contain an inherent igno-
rance of the social consequences of his actions and a blindness to
the repercussions of his free-market ideology. The universal orien-
tation of his free-market ideology is therefore rather distinct from
that of critical cosmopolitan thought. This distinction is illumi-
nated by David Harvey when he repudiates what he considers to
be an “uncritical,” neoliberal model of cosmopolitanism endorsed
by thinkers such as Kwame Anthony Appiah. According to Harvey,
Appiah’s conception of cosmopolitanism is particularly insidious
because it satisfies the left-wing desires for cultural equality while
ignoring the material basis of social iniquity.^91 Indeed, as pointed
out in the introduction, Harvey identifies the principal obstacles to
universal cosmopolitan conciliation as being socioeconomic inequal-
ity. Cosmopolitan thought must therefore countenance the physical
points of contact that connect people to bring about a more equita-
ble form of coexistence.^92
Levov’s benevolence can therefore be viewed as heavily blinkered
and fettered to a system of rules that necessarily creates the types of
conditions that produce the Newark riots. Indeed, early in the novel,
Zuckerman diagnoses Levov as being “fettered to history, an instru-
ment of history” (p. 3). The diction used here suggests restriction of
movement and choice, a fate brought about by being closely bound
to the mechanisms that, in a traditional Marxist sense, “produce”
history: economic (material) conditions. The verb “fetter,” then,
captures what Zuckerman perceives as being almost involuntarily
consigned to the vagaries of the free market, which dictate whom he
will employ, whom he will ma ke redunda nt, a nd where he will locate
his place of work. Furthermore, Levov is conjoined to “history” in
the crude sense that his consciousness can be seen as an instrument