Home As a Mobile and Flexible Domestic Space in Amitav Ghosh’s Alternative Ideas of Cosmopolitanism

Abstract

In this globalized cosmopolitan world, the concept of home has become one of the most crucial socio-cultural perceptions, playing a significant role in establishing community and transnational relationships both at the local and the global level. Amitav Ghosh’s alternative ideas of cosmopolitanism are committed to criticizing the neo-imperial characteristic of the contemporary capitalist cosmopolitan world. This paper argues that Amitav Ghosh through his selected fiction - The Shadow Lines (1988) and The Hungry Tide (2004) - has shown how breaking away from the conventional, constrictive ideas and established definitions of home, that often run the risk of becoming the birthplace of many of the communal, regional or national fanatic ideologies, contributes to forming alternative ideas of home and family that are more mobile and flexible in nature and how they are instrumental in shaping individuals as true cosmopolitans.

Keywords

• Globalisation
• transnationalism
• postcolonialism
• alternative cosmopolitanism
• India