ABSTRACT

With a point of departure in Pheng Cheah’s idea of world as a temporal-normative category that encompasses universal humanity, this article discusses Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West as an urgent response to the need to rethink belonging in the current age of globalization and increased mobility across geographical spaces. This response draws on what Hamid calls “radical hopefulness” founded on empathy and solidarity embodied in the novel’s mapping of a world where migration and prayer are foregrounded as interconnective gestures that bring out shared humanity and hope for a world where “being with” supersedes notions of origin or national belonging. In the novel, migration and prayer pivot on connectivity and alternate ways of being in the world that, in Hamid’s response, function as radical, if not revolutionary, acts of worlding – in line with Cheah’s conception of the normative efficacy of world literature.

摘要

以彭哲的世界观作为一个包含普世人类的时间规范范畴的观点出发，本文讨论了莫辛哈米德的《西出境》。作为对重新思考当前全球化时代的归属感和跨地域流动性增加的必要性的紧急回应。这种回应借鉴了哈米德所说的基于同情和团结的“激进的希望”，体现在小说对世界的映射中，移民和祈祷被视为相互关联的姿态，带来了共同的人性和对“与他人在一起”取代观念的世界的希望原产地或民族归属。在小说中，移民和祈祷以世界的连通性和替代方式为中心，在哈米德的回应中，即使不是革命性的，也是激进的世界化行为——与谢对世界文学规范效力的概念一致。