272 / 138
272
E
UR
A
MERICA
albeit in a fictional form, similarly ponders the cosmopolitan-local
continuum.
4The novel has been said to make “a new departure [from
previous novels] in being set in Japan, India, Afghanistan and New
York as well as Karachi” (King, 2011: 149). Shamsie herself also grants
that the novel is “more international” than her first four novels
(Shamsie, 2011: 212). Such an international novel, however, does not
uncritically celebrate mobility under globalization. Rather, it depicts in
detail the traumas of Asian and Muslim immigrants from WWII to the
War on Terror to underscore the plight of people in diaspora and the
danger of patriotism being mutated into aggressive nationalism and
expanded into imperialism. There seems to be a contradiction between
Offence
and
Burnt Shadows
, as the former favors the nation as a unit of
analysis in shedding light on Shamsie’s rooted cosmopolitanism,
whereas the latter criticizes nationalism as a serious challenge for
cosmopolitanism. However, with respect to individuals’ attachment to
the nation or state, it is essential to distinguish patriotism from
ethnocentrism. As Roudometof points out, “[t]he moral advocacy of
rooted cosmopolitanism rests on the proposition that patriotism . . .
does not necessarily imply ethnocentrism” (2005: 122). Yet, as my later
analysis of
Burnt Shadows
will show, patriotism becomes destructive
when it is confused and conflated with rabid nationalism and
ethnocentrism, which, according to Roudometof, is a quality
“conceptually linked to locals, who are expected to adopt the
viewpoint of unconditional support for one’s country, putting one’s
country first and protecting national interest irrespective of whether
their own position is morally superior or not” (122). It is not the idea
of national identity or love of one’s country
per se
that Shamsie’s
critical cosmopolitanism denounces but rather ethnocentric patriotism
4
I have written elsewhere on
Burnt Shadows
with thorough analysis of Shamsie’s
trauma writing in relation to diaspora and ethics. Other critics like Aroosa Kanwal
(2015), Gohar Karim Khan (2011), and Sachi Nakachi (2012) have dealt with
issues of Islamophobia, globalization, nationalism, feminism as well as Shamsie’s
use of transnational allegory. My analysis here will therefore focus on a few critical
parts of the novel that could best substantiate Shamsie’s critical cosmopolitanism
as it is developed in the subaltern positions.