Cosmopolitanism in the Shadow of Empire: Reading Displacements of Nineteenth-Century ‘Homes’, ‘Worlds’, and Life-Writing Subjects

Though cosmopolitanism is entangled with mobilities and border-crossings, studies of the concept as it emerged in the nineteenth century are, ironically, rooted to the places and spaces of European empires. This thesis unsettles orthodox theorisations and histories of nineteenth-century cosmopolitanisms by drawing focus to the concept’s imbrications with displacement. It situates cosmopolitanism in a transimperial context as a spatial subjectivity. It explores how this subjectivity is constructed in the life-writings of three displaced subjects: Emily Ruete (1844–1924), M.N. Roy (1887–1954), and Isabelle Eberhardt (1877–1904). The conceptual framework of the thesis is informed by postcolonial figurations of the migrant, the exile, and the nomad; its methodologies draw on recent work by scholars of life-writing spatialities. The analyses presented in the three chapters begin from a sense that displaced subjects accentuate anxieties and uncertainties of belonging to ‘the world’.
Chapter One explores the possibilities of a migratory or vernacular cosmopolitanism using the case of Emily Ruete / Sayyida Salme bint Saʿīd’s Memoirs of an Arabian Princess (1886) as well as her unpublished letters from 1867–1883. Chapter Two follows the development of M.N. Roy’s cosmopolitanisms, forged in the insurgent spaces of British India, and developed during his years in exile from 1915–1930, as narrated in Memoirs (posthumously published, 1964). Chapter Three examines Isabelle Eberhardt’s life-writing from 1897–1903 as remnants of a nomadic cosmopolitanism formed at the cusp of the twentieth century.
These autobiographical case studies emphasise the need to unknot the universalised image of the cosmopolite as an intellectually detached wanderer through the world. It demonstrates how life-writing forms allow displaced subjects to exploit and mediate their spatial experiences. The thesis turns away from the critical tendency to present new histories or grand narratives of cosmopolitanism, instead arguing that the concept should be read through autobiographical episodes of encounter and moments of dislocation.