Moraru’s Cosmodernism

 
The critical discourse about postmodernism has recently taken a turn toward declarations that postmodernism is dead, finished, past. The aftermath of 9/11 and the trend of American fiction that is grounded in realism have prompted critics into a discussion about the post-postmodern moment that marks our existence.¹ Christian Moraru is deeply invested in this discussion; in his Cosmodernism: American Narrative, Late Globalization, and the New Cultural Imaginary, he offers a unique theoretical and ethical framework for analyzing literature created in the late 1990s, after the peak of postmodernism, and raises literary and ethical questions about our contemporary moment. Moraru introduces a term that inventively describes the scope, ambition, and breadth of this period and its cultural practices: cosmodernism.
 
Cosmodernism is, according to Moraru, a paradigm that is typical of the period after 1989 and whose main characteristic is relationality, or what he calls “being-in-relation, with an other” (2). Such relationality is manifested in American fictional narratives as an identity that is always created in relation to a wider context, surpassing the geopolitical and cultural limits of the U.S. Moraru thus sees cosmodernism as a “rationale and vehicle for a new togetherness, for a solidarity across political, ethnic, racial, religious and other boundaries” (5). Drawing on Levinasian ethics, he argues that cosmodernism’s ethical imperative and its novelty aim to bring us all together. This ethical investment is the main disparity between postmodernism and cosmodernism, and Moraru implicitly draws on the criticism of postmodernism as a socially disengaged practice, although he does not voice that stance in his text.² Cosmodernism moreover 1) displaces our ignorance “toward returning the ‘I’ to its intellectual and moral dignity by allowing him or her to see things usually hiding in the shadow of his or her egocentrism” (75); 2) makes it possible to develop relationships in difference that Levinas introduced in his writing; and 3) introduces a “historicized argument for a cosmodern ethics” by reading the works of the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century as a “drama of with-ness” (75).³ The main characteristic of cosmodernism is, in other words, its interest in a humanity conditioned by diverse political, social, and cultural elements. Moraru explores this interest mainly by way of its linguistic performance.
 
In the first part of the study, “Idiomatics,” Moraru examines the way that American cosmoderns treat language, recognizing in this treatment the foundation of an approach to ethics and, therefore, his own cosmodern theory as well. He recognizes a shift from a cosmopolitan view of linguistic globalism toward a multilingual, plurivocal mode. While the cosmopolitan approach was universalist, the cosmodern is idiomatic: “the cosmodern self makes itself, linguistically and otherwise, as it opens itself to the post-1989 Babel; thus, whatever this self speaks about, it speaks in tongues” (9). Using Jacques Derrida’s understanding of linguistic skills and Doris Summer’s critique of Derrida’s concepts, Moraru argues that the linguistic and national identities of this period are formulated in language “outside the stricture of . . . equivalence” (80). Americanness, for instance, fluctuates and depends on linguistic performance; linguistic and national identities are performed and created in relation to the totality of exposure to other linguistic and national identities. The American nation and native speakers are not the only measure of linguistic nationality and fluency, but rather participate in the performative act of creating “nation,” “language,” “American,” “American English,” and “native.” To illustrate this point, Moraru analyses Raymond Federman’s Double or Nothing and Chang-rae Lee’s Native Speaker, claiming that Lee “pins his hopes on the linguistic jumble itself. Set against monoglossic cosmopolitanism, his polyglossic cosmodernism . . . values . . . people’s rights not just to idioms not theirs by birth but also to idiomatic uses of these idioms” (102). In Lee’s novel, which has been celebrated for its linguistic and multicultural optimism, Moraru sees an example of the new, celebratory national and linguistic performativity that versifies and diversifies America. With their “‘Babelized’ English,” Moraru suggests, Lee’s characters acquire a linguistically cosmodern citizenship, while their multilingualism contests solidified political and cultural meanings (107).
 
In the second chapter, “Onomastics,” Moraru analyzes naming and names in recent American narratives, focusing on the relationship between self and others displayed in the act of naming. He claims that in cosmodernism, the “name employs those others’ names to call the self and tell his or her story” (9). The onomastic imaginary is rooted in the perpetual processes of designation and identification, while it serves as a marker of with-ness. Moraru writes that cosmodern names “reveal us to the world by revealing our ties to others” (123) and that they denote not only the surpassed boundaries of the patronymic but also the boundaries of our communities; names introduce the world to us, and us to the world. Names are “anthropological vehicles of compassion” that allow us to empathize with others (155). Moraru finds typically cosmodern naming in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake and Lee’s A Gesture Life, in which the characters’ names encapsulate their interconnectedness with their pasts and presents: their histories, nations, and identities. The characters’ names are also a cultural allegory. Moraru’s onomastics is based on Derrida’s understanding of naming introduced in On the Name (1995), which exposes the postructuralist’s interest in the ethics and politics of responsibility. Moraru reinforces Derrida’s argument that a name is simultaneously a sign of otherness and a cultural approximation, as well as a deferral of presence; when a person is not present, her name teaches us about the “presence not present” (126). Moraru sees even more in names, however, namely the “distinctive affinity” that “does not jeopardize the distinctiveness of self and other. The name builds a bridge to the (other)’s side, which the other crosses not to assimilate me but to help me get a purchase on myself” (127). Moraru’s readings are captivating—especially his interpretation of The Namesake—but it is difficult to accept that they reflect the specificity of the period in question, if only because their conclusions can be applied to a vast range of literature. His understanding of onomastics—i.e., his idea that the name is always inscribed by cosmodern togetherness and is a vestibule to with-ness—is also too optimistic, although it cannot be entirely disregarded. Moraru is right to claim that in names we can recognize an attempt to create a new cultural narrative, but naming in cosmodern works, as in the cosmodern world, is often arbitrary. The name Lola in Junot Díaz’s Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao doesn’t suggest very much, for instance, and neither does the name Bruno in Aleksandar Hemon’s collection of stories.
 
In the third chapter, Moraru turns to the “translational imaginary” that revolves around the figure of the translator in contemporary American fiction. He finds in translation the prime cultural modality of cosmodernism: “Since relationality is the keystone of the cosmodern and translation is a relational form, translation scenes and, with them, an entire translational way of seeing the world take up a central position in the cultural projections of cosmodernism” (158). Moraru describes a shift in emphasis in translation studies and its recognition that, along with linguistic decoding, translation requires cultural deciphering and therefore “establishes a relation to the other culture” (165). He reminds us of the infamous Umberto Eco example, “Oridinai un caffe, lo buttai giù in un secundo ed uscii dal bar” (“I ordered a coffee, swilled it down in a second, and went out of the bar”), with which the semiotician demonstrates that the meaning of the sentence is different to those who drink espresso and those who drink coffee from large cups. Moraru leaves the sentence in its original Italian, demonstrating that the translation allows us to understand the sentence at the linguistic level, while the meanings of not only “coffee” but also “bar” do not need to be cross-cultural equivalents. Instead of being an objective, one-way linguistic transmission from one language into another that is primarily concerned with textuality, philology, and formalism, translation regarded in this way pushes us “toward questions of identity, cultural politics, hegemony, and a relational and self-relational approach to the translator as meaning-maker” (169). Moraru insists that translation allows us to grasp and re-comprehend our own world if and when we make ourselves familiar with the world of others; the translator makes such an attempt possible. The cosmodern translation that incorporates both interpretation and deciphering thus encourages self-reading, and Moraru finds this exemplified by Nicole Mones’s Lost in Translation and Suki Kim’s The Interpreter. But the works that Moraru analyzes are all written in English, with their characters rather than their authors acting as translators. He still makes the apparently unfounded suggestion that by “translating” (fictional) worlds to American audiences, Mones and Kim also act as translators of both cultures and languages, and thereby demonstrate how the cosmodern author—unlike her predecessors—efficiently interprets linguistic and cultural disparities.
 
In the fourth and the fifth chapters, “Readings” and “Metabolics,” Moraru pursues these theoretical premises. “Readings” is divided into three parts. The first section discusses the twenty-first century’s new “togetherness” or cohesion across social, political, and cultural differences, while the remaining two sections interpret Pico Iyer’s Abandon, Alice Randall’s Pushkin or the Queen of Spades, and Azar Nasifi’s Lolita in Tehran. These interpretations are particularly successful because of their focus on the politics that emerge between the texts and their readers. When analyzing Lolita in Tehran, Moraru is interested in “situational” reading, where the position of the interpreter marks the interpreted. Nafisi’s aesthetic world is, in fact, highly politicized exactly because “autocracy hyperpoliticizes the world, making everything political while denying political agency to the individuals in this world” (224). The politics of the book, therefore, are cosmodern because they do not stem from the content or theme inside the book but rather emerge in between the text and its readers. Moraru maintains that “The cosmodern reader thus fully ‘creates,’ and this creation honors the other, the ‘You,” and thus the higher ‘Thou,’ as reading arises in relation” (217). In “Metabolics,” an extension of “Readings,” Moraru argues that the cosmodern reading is critically transformative rather than iterative—its components transform the monolithic world into with-ness—, as exemplified by Don DeLillo’s late works and Karen Tei Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange. Moraru is invested in showing that cosmodernism has a global, transformative potential both for culture and for us; its culture “canvasses” a body of texts into which we simultaneously are born and such culture is a posteriori inscribed into us (256). Those gestures are global as well as “mondializing” in nature, since within a mundus, “while touching, mingling, and turning into one another, bodies nevertheless preserve their differential identities” (257). Cosmodernism contributes to our development as human beings by transcending the boundaries of national literatures. It is ethical in nature because relationalism is its main characteristic, not only in the sense that we are formed in relation to others, but also in the sense that those relations improve us.
 
These postulates culminate in the final and most passionate chapter that reads as a manifesto of cosmodernism. Although the shortest, this epilogue is the most significant part of the book; it summarizes the main arguments and theoretical readings and is vibrant with the urgency of the new. Moraru claims that with Cosmodernism, he does not propose “another grand theory but a textually and contextually minded argument for cultural change in post-1989 American letters” (7). (His cosmodernism implies the recognition of an essential cultural change associated with the post-1989 moment, in spite of his constant insistence that global interconnectivity is nothing new and that cosmodern artists are not the first ones to discuss it.) In fact, Moraru’s “Epilogue: Postmodernism into Cosmodernism” is declarative in nature. He opens with a discussion of DeLillo’s understanding of the future in Cosmopolis and in Underworld and recognizes a crucial question that those two texts introduce: “How should we think about the future, about time broadly?” (300). Of course the answer is in cosmodernism, which he discusses in eight points.
 
Moraru defines cosmodernism as either a continuation of or a reaction to postmodernism. He sees postmodernism not only as a methodological, philosophical, cultural, and historical predecessor of cosmodernism, but also as a practice that disables us from successfully grasping our immediate present. Moraru claims that postmodernism cannot handle and therefore does not respond to global crisis, primarily because of its tendency to “universalize” and “westernize” non-U.S. cultural spaces. Moreover, Moraru says, postmodernism’s globalization emphasizes westernization, which makes postmodernism “an aspect of the global crisis rather than its solution culturally, philosophically, or otherwise” (309). That is why a new theory needs to be introduced. Although postmodern universality is acquired and not intrinsic—which makes postmodernism problematic at the current historical and cultural moment—postmodernism nevertheless introduced a set of terminologies and methodologies for the project that will be finished well after it: cosmodernism. Unlike postmodernism, which is sensitive to the Other and minorities but reduces the Other to a theme, cosmodernism is centered around “the other’s presence [that] founds, organizes, and orients cosmodern representation rather than merely supplying it with the subject de jour” (313). Postmodernism and its theory indicate, albeit in a limited way, a historicizing move toward relationality, the main cosmodern attribute. Such a move began in the 1980s, when cosmodernism “start[ed] replacing postmodernism’s conceptual unit, the nation-state, with an ever more worlded world” (312). According to Moraru, this process has been transnational, cross-traditional, and intercultural, and although he considers 1989 the year of epochal change that pushed American culture toward “becoming a culture of relatedness,” he is careful to emphasize that cosmodernism is cross-canonical and of “soft” epochality: cosmodern elements can also be recognized in late modern as well as postcolonial works. Since cosmodernism does not have a dominant style but is characterized by relationality, Moraru reiterates that its importance lies in the ethical. Cosmodernism, he says, complicates our thinking about discourse, history, culture, and tradition by always incorporating experiences and cultures of the other, and therefore reducing our self-centrism. Cosmodernism is about others, not about the Other as a literary subject.
 
Moraru provides a generous, optimistic vision of our contemporary moment (as well as of the future) and introduces a concept that challenges common notions about our time. While the present is customarily critiqued for its ruthless (global) politics and a whole set of questionable relationships (e.g., racial and religious), Moraru’s approach makes it possible to look at the present with admiration and pride, empowers us by emphasizing that we are ethical human beings, and re-establishes a humanism that effortlessly crosses the boundaries of social and cultural constructs. He argues that “literature matters” and that we, as scholars, should act on it. If postmodern politics is apolitical and ego-centric, then the concept of cosmodernism is needed for meaningful interaction with others and for leaving behind the sometimes tiresome discussions about postmodernism’s significance.
 
If we in the period after the fall of communism are finally able to form our cultural identities in relation to others, however, is that because of global economy, ever-expanding capitalism, or something else? If cosmodernism draws us together, does that mean that postmodernism tore us apart? And if cosmodernism is not merely to supplement postmodernism, as Moraru claims, why is 1989 so crucial for periodization of the contemporary? Why would the ruined Berlin Wall be so important to contemporary American fiction, especially when Moraru’s literary examples include the works of Lahiri, Kim, Mones, Nafisi, Lee, and Yamashita, authors whose relationality can hardly be attributed to the end of the Cold War? Would it not be fair to say that the epochal year for American fiction is actually 2001, as Phillip E. Wegner suggests in his Life between Two Deaths, 1989-2001 (2009)?⁴ And what about the recent global economic crisis—does it not complicate the notion of unselfish relationality?
 
These questions, however, do not diminish Moraru’s ambitious concept. His previous books focused on postmodern rewriting of nineteenth-century narratives—the ways in which late twentieth-century fiction writers “rework former texts for ideologically critical purposes” (Memorious 19)—and on the relationship between postcommunism and postmodernism.⁵ In those monographs and collections, Moraru approached postmodernism as the contemporary of postcommunism, and it is remarkable to see the evolution of his critical thought as it becomes increasingly informed by an interest in representation, intertextuality, and non-American postmodernisms, as well as by a growing interest in global, political affairs. Cosmodernism impresses by its depth and range, and offers a fascinating framework for comprehending our contemporaneity which, it seems, confuses us by its complexity as much as by the legacy of a postmodernism that, as many agree, is dead.