Journal | Il Tolomeo
Journal issue | 26 | 2024
Research Article | Inhabiting a Chaos-World: Refugee Transnational Identities in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West (2017)
Inhabiting a Chaos-World: Refugee Transnational Identities in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West (2017)
Abstract
This article explores Mohsin Hamid’s novel Exit West (2017) combining principles pertaining to social geography, affect theory, and (post)migration studies with postcolonial theory. It aims to highlight how Hamid’s use of magical realism triggers political, philosophical, and socio-emotional reflections by condensing in the story arc the intercultural and intersubjective processes that characterise the migratory experience and the postmigrant condition. Firstly, it investigates how Exit West incorporates magical realism to represent the psychoemotional dynamics of migration and to problematize the concept of cosmopolitanism; secondly, it discusses how the novel promotes a re-thinking of migration identities and experiences in terms of affective transnationality; thirdly, it points out how the refugee communities represented in the novel are manifestations of a chaos-world in which identity formation is shaped by sociocultural encounters, multilingualism, media use, and processes of affiliation.
Submitted: June 17, 2024 | Accepted: Sept. 30, 2024 | Published Dec. 9, 2024 | Language: en
Keywords Transnationalism • Chaos-world • Multiplicity • Exit West • Refugee novel • Mohsin Hamid
Copyright © 2024 Valerie Tosi. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/Tol/2499-5975/2024/01/004
