J.m. Coetzee and the Limits of Cosmopolitanism

J.M. Coetzee and the Limits of Cosmopolitanism analyzes how J.M. Coetzee's later fiction tests current understandings of the promises and pitfalls of cosmopolitanism. Drawing on postcolonial and gender studies, as well as affect theory, the book interrogates cosmopolitan philosophies in which feeling cosmopolitan is equated with being cosmopolitan. The study proposes that Coetzee's writing questions both the desirability and inevitability of purportedly cosmopolitan feelings. It offers an alternative model of cosmopolitanism that challenges the supposition that cosmopolitanism requires the propagation of openness to others, or the proliferation of multiple attachments.

Katherine Hallemeier is Assistant Professor of Postcolonial Anglophone Literature in the Department of English at Oklahoma State University, USA.