Cosmopolitanism and the migrant individual in Southeast Asian literature

• Main Author: Lim, Timothy Hong Jun
• Other Authors: Wee Wan-Ling, Christopher Justin
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: DRNTU::Humanities::Literature::Singapore
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/59647
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Kwame Anthony Appiah, in his treatise on cosmopolitanism, declares: The world is getting more crowded: in the next half a century the population of our once foraging species will approach nine billion. Depending on the circumstances, conversations [between people] across boundaries can be delightful, or just vexing: what they mainly are, though, is inevitable. (Appiah xxi) In an era where “each of us can realistically imagine contacting any other of our six billion conspecifics” (Appiah xii), the individual is increasingly confronted with a cosmopolitan environment, voluntarily or not. This essay thus aims to explore the migrant individual’s relationship with cosmopolitanism through the use of Tash Aw’s Five Star Billionaire and Claire Tham’s The Inlet, novels which take place in the highly modernised, cosmopolitan spaces of Shanghai and Singapore respectively. The essay will also explore how exactly the various influencers of cosmopolitanism also affect the individuals who reside within these cosmopolitan societies as well as how they react to those influencers in turn. In particular, this essay will examine the effects of globalisation, capitalism, as well as the culture industry upon the migrant individual.