Sublime

Naipaul’s early intimation of what a ‘vernacular cosmopolitanism’ might be is extremely useful in discriminating between two forms of cosmopolitical thinking that are deeply ingrained in contemporary discourses of globalization.

“IT IS AS IF WE ALL CARRY in our makeup the effects of accidents that have befallen our ancestors,” writes V. S. Naipaul, “as if we are in many ways programmed before we are born, our lives half outlined for us.”

It’s not for nothing that Kafka spoke of literature as “a hatchet with which we chop at the frozen seas inside us.”

In this jackfruit republic that served as a franchise of the United States, Americans expected me to be like those millions who spoke no English, pidgin English, or accented English. I resented their expectation. That was why I was always eager to demonstrate, in both spoken and written word, my mastery of their language. My vocabulary was broader,