Decoloniality and Nomadic Cosmopolitanism in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West

Walter Mignolo’s ambitious endeavor to establish decoloniality focuses on steering clear of Western expressions of modernity and the necessity of rejecting the ‘colonial matrix of power’. Guided by Mignolo’s effort to explore decolonial thinking, this article charts the relationship between decoloniality and nomadic cosmopolitanism, arguing that the latter is one manifestation of the former. The article examines Exit West (2017) by British-Pakistani novelist Mohsin Hamid as a transnational work of literature that challenges conventional Western definitions of cosmopolitanism. Hamid’s Exit West offers an insight into the lives and experiences of modern-day refugees as they flee war and strive to find safety in a world with ever-tightening restrictions on borders despite its growing transnationalism. Examining the concepts of mobility, cosmopolitanism, and decoloniality, and mapping the connection between them, this article first establishes how Hamid offers a new take on cosmopolitanism via refugees forced to migrate involuntarily, by questioning conventional affiliations between cosmopolitanism on the one hand, and affluence and elitism on the other. By examining the liminal spaces where characters reside, it illustrates that occupying a liminal position potentially contributes to cosmopolitanizing a stratum of individuals that would hardly be considered cosmopolitan in the first place. It examines the concept of decoloniality as delineated by Mignolo and attempts to chart the connection between the dislocated nomadic cosmopolitanism in Hamid’s novel and Mignolo’s “epistemic de-linking”. The article argues that nomadic cosmopolitanism is simultaneously capable of challenging standard conventions of Western cosmopolitanism, thus attaining epistemic de-linking and becoming a new manifestation of decoloniality.