Ordinary People on the Move: Subaltern Cosmopolitanisms in Amitav Ghosh’s Writings

Abstract

This essay draws on Ulf Hannerz’s notion of locals and cosmopolitans and Zygmunt Bauman’s idea of the tourists and the vagabonds to focus on the movements of ordinary folks in Ghosh’s works due to a number of reasons that equip them with an “orientation towards the other†(Berland 124). Borrowing Joseph Berland’s category of “multi-service nomads,†it argues that his engagement with these movements anticipates the new discourse on cosmopolitanism and shows that in contrast to contemporary cosmopolitan narratives that privilege the movements of the new professional, intellectual or artistic elite, Ghosh recovers the buried narratives of those who may be called subaltern cosmopolitans even though their movements might have been triggered from above. After summarising contemporary understandings of cosmopolitanism as developed in the discourse of globalisation, the essay proceeds to uncover such cosmopolitanism that was produced through the contact zones created by trade, travel and indenturement.