A Cosmopolitan Reading of Zadie Smith’s Swing Time
Investigating the Interrelation Between Mobility and Transformation of Self-Understanding and Identity
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 22002500 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Farnaz ESMKHANİ YOUVALARİ (0000-0002-8367-2181, Istanbul Kültür University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 61 |
| Issue | 61 |
| Pages | 289-304 |
| Publication date | 2022-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Journal of Social Sciences (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2149-0821 • E-ISSN: 2149-0821 |
| Publisher | ASOS Yayinevi (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.29228/sobider.66448 |
| OpenAlex | W4312875087 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 7 |
This article seeks to demonstrate the transformational aspect of self-understanding and identity by interrogating the relationship between cosmopolitanism and mobility in Zadie Smith’s fifth novel Swing Time (2016). The contemporary school of thought that focuses on the transformational nature of self-understanding and identity is critical cosmopolitanism (Delanty 2009). In his sociological approach to cosmopolitanism, Gerard Delanty suggests that self-understanding and identity, firmly embedded in the interaction of self and other, are of changing, processual, and relational nature. This article elaborates and explores how in Swing Time the unnamed narrator’s mobility helps to move her identity and self-understanding beyond the ascribed determination and allocation of static typologies such as race, ethnicity, family, and local environment towards a more processual and transformational understanding of these notions in patterns of continuity and change. It concludes by arguing against fixed and fragmented typologies suggesting that, from a cosmopolitan perspective, Swing Time’s narrator’s self-understanding and identity are not torn between the competing forces in relation to notions of fixedness, on the one hand, and fragmentation, on the other hand, but are in a developmental process of becoming better
Aesthetics · Art · Cosmopolitanism · Epistemology · Political science · Politics · Self · Sociology · Swing · Transformational leadership · Gender Studies · Law · Migration and Labor Dynamics · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology · Youth Education and Societal Dynamics
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |