Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T19:28:10.307Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

COSMOPOLITANISM'S ACTUALLY EXISTING BEYOND; TOWARD A VICTORIAN GEOPOLITICAL AESTHETIC

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 May 2010

Lauren M. E. Goodlad
Lauren M. E. Goodlad*
Affiliation:
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Although “cosmopolitanism” is, in many respects, the recognized creation of the eighteenth century, in recent years the idea has made a mark on the theory and practice of Victorian studies. In this essay I offer some reflections on this development while suggesting one future path for a Victorianist cosmopolitan practice. My goal is to limn a theory of what I call “the Victorian geopolitical aesthetic” which, in grasping the globalizing dynamics of the nineteenth century, illuminates the literature and culture of that era. By way of doing so, I will explore cosmopolitan literary study as it has so far developed, describing its focus on ethics. I will also try to update the legacy of historical materialism (including the work of Georg Lukács, Raymond Williams, and Fredric Jameson) by integrating it with newer transnational perspectives such as cosmopolitanism and the new Atlantic studies. My aim is to suggest ways of reading Victorian literature – specifically realist fiction but potentially other genres as well – which recognize the power of literature to engage “actually existing cosmopolitanisms” then and now.

Type
Position Papers
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , September 2010 , pp. 399 - 411
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

WORKS CITED

Anderson, Amanda. “Cosmopolitanism, Universalism, and the Divided Legacies of Modernity.” Ed. Cheah and Robbins 265–89.Google Scholar
Anderson, Amanda. The Powers of Distance: Cosmopolitanism and the Cultivation of Detachment. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bakhtin, M. M.The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Ed. Holquist, Michael. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Holquist. Austin: U of Texas P, 1981.Google Scholar
Boelhower, William. “The Rise of the New Atlantic Studies Matrix.” American Literary History 20.1–2 (2008): 83–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre, and Wacquant, Loïc J. D.. An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1992.Google Scholar
Bristow, Joseph. “Whether ‘Victorian’ Poetry: a Genre and Its Period.” Victorian Poetry 42.1 (2004): 81–109.Google Scholar
Cheah, Pheng, and Robbins, Bruce, eds. Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1998.Google Scholar
Cohen, Margaret, and Dever, Carolyn, eds. The Literary Channel: the Inter-National Invention of the Novel. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2002.Google Scholar
Desai, Meghnad. “Globalisation: Neither Ideology Nor Utopia.” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 14.1 (2000): 16–31.Google Scholar
Eagleton, Terry. Marxism and Literary Criticism. Berkeley: U of California P, 1976.Google Scholar
Eagleton, Terry, Jameson, Fredric, and Said, Edward. Nationalism, Colonialism, and Literature. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1990.Google Scholar
Flint, Kate. “Why ‘Victorian’?: Response.” Victorian Studies 47.2 (2005): 230–39.Google Scholar
Gikandi, Simon. “Race and Cosmopolitanism.” American Literary History 14.3 (2002): 593–615.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilroy, Paul. Against Race: Imagining Political Culture beyond the Color Line. Cambridge: Belknap, 2000.Google Scholar
Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1993.Google Scholar
Gilroy, Paul. ‘There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack’: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1991.Google Scholar
Goodlad, Lauren M. E. “Trollopian ‘Foreign Policy’: Rootedness and Cosmopolitan in the Mid-Victorian Global Imaginary.” PMLA 124.2 (2009): 437–54.Google Scholar
Goodlad, Lauren M. E., and Wright, Julia M.. “Introduction and Keywords.” Special Issue on “Victorian Internationalisms.” Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net 48 (2007). Web. 1 Oct. 2009.Google Scholar
Goswami, Manu. “Rethinking the Modular Nation Form: Toward a Sociohistorical Conception of Nationalism.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 44.4 (2002): 770–99.Google Scholar
Hall, Catherine. Civilising Subjects: Colony and Metropole in the English Imagination, 1830–1867. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2002.Google Scholar
Jameson, Fredric. “Cognitive Mapping.” Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Ed. Nelson, Cary and Grossberg, Lawrence. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1988. 347–58.Google Scholar
Jameson, Fredric. The Geopolitical Aesthetic: Cinema and Space in the World System. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1992.Google Scholar
Jameson, Fredric. “Modernism and Imperialism.” Eagleton et al. 41–66.Google Scholar
Jameson, Fredric. The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1981.Google Scholar
Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, Or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke UP, 1990.Google Scholar
Jameson, Fredric. A Singular Modernity: Essay on the Ontology of the Present. London: Verso, 2002.Google Scholar
LaCapra, Dominick. History in Transit: Experience, Identity, Critical Theory. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lazarus, Neil. Nationalism and Cultural Practice in the Postcolonial World. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lukács, Georg. The Historical Novel. Trans. Mitchell, Hannah and Mitchell, Stephen. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1983.Google Scholar
Marcus, Sharon. “Same Difference? Transnationalism, Comparative Literature, and Victorian Studies.” Victorian Studies 45.4 (2003): 677–86.Google Scholar
Moretti, Franco. “Conjectures on World Literature.” New Left Review 1 (2000): 54–68.Google Scholar
Prendergast, Christopher, ed. Cultural Materialism: On Raymond Williams. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1995.Google Scholar
Robbins, Bruce. “Introduction Part I.” Ed. Cheah and Robbins 1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sartori, Andrew. “The British Empire and its Liberal Mission.” Journal of Modern History 78.3 (2006): 623–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shaw, Harry E.Narrating Reality: Austen, Scott, Eliot. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1999.Google Scholar
Simpson, David. “Raymond Williams: Feeling for Structures, Voicing ‘History.’” Ed. Prendergast 29–50.Google Scholar
Stewart, Garrett. “The Foreign Offices of British Fiction.” Modern Language Quarterly 61.1 (2000): 181–206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tucker, Herbert F. “Doughty's The Dawn in Britain and the Modernist Eclipse of the Victorian.” Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net 47 (2007). Web. 1 Oct. 2009.Google Scholar
Tucker, Irene. “International Whiggery.” Victorian Studies 45.4 (2003): 687–97.Google Scholar
Vertovec, Steven, and Cohen, Robin, eds. Conceiving Cosmopolitanism: Theory Context, and Practice. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002.Google Scholar
Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1977.Google Scholar
Wolfson, Susan. “Reading for Form.” Modern Language Quarterly 61.1 (2000): 1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar