Join us for a book talk on The Dialectic of Cosmopolitan Time with Shaj Mathew:

This study proposes a new dimension of cosmopolitanism: the temporal quality of cultural “coexistence.” The texts under analysis describe how multiple cultural temporalities coexist within a given moment of time. This definition does not overlook the imperial, economic, and aesthetic aspects of cosmopolitanism, but rather expresses them in terms of time. The book’s theory of temporal coexistence acquires special resonance in the Turkish novels of Orhan Pamuk, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, and Ahmet Midhat; the Iranian cinema of Abbas Kiarostami and the Persian poetry of Forough Farrokhzad; and in the chronological world history told by the Louvre Abu Dhabi. These works of Middle Eastern culture are modern and contemporary, yet they contain a simultaneity of historical eras. The coexistence of these contradictory eras enables the study to contest notions such as “European progress” and “postcolonial belatedness” that uphold the developmentalist conception of history. In the process, cosmopolitan time improves upon binary understandings of East and West and tradition and modernity. The coexistence of disparate times—linear and nonlinear; qualitative and quantitative; secular and religious; reactionary and revolutionary—reframes cross-cultural difference through time instead of space. The Dialectic of Cosmopolitan Time thus advances a new paradigm for cross-cultural thinking, revealing the temporal correlate of cultural hybridity.

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