Zoë Wicomb and the Cape Cosmopolitan

Abstract

This essay places Zoë Wicomb's writing in the context of recent accounts of the ‘new cosmopolitanism’, and argues that the imagined figure of the Cape cosmopolitan produced in her writing puts into question the either-or relation of the terms ‘national’ and ‘cosmopolitan’. Comparing the metaphorics of the ‘tavern of the seas’ (applied to the Cape of Good Hope) with the US national myth of the ‘melting pot’, the essay re-situates the former in order to claim for the Cape cosmopolitan an inclusivity, fluidity and non-hegemonic character practically denied the latter. The essay focuses largely on David's Story, but refers also to You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town, Playing in the Light and The One that Got Away, and foregrounds the ironic mode of Wicomb's writing, in which all claims to truth, including the claims about the ‘new cosmopolitanism’ put forward in recent cosmopolitan studies as well as in this essay, are held in question.