Cosmopolitanism as an Antidote to American Nationalism in Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist

This essay explores how The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid offers a potential cosmopolitan antidote to the myths of American nationalism which allow the United States to pursue self-interested policies abroad that consequently deny the humanity of those who are seen as commodities or collateral damage. Using Richard T. Hughes’s insights into the myths that underlie American nationalism, and Thomas Bender and Anthony Kwame Appiah’s theories of cosmopolitanism in practice, I will show how cosmopolitanism can be an alternative to exclusive American nationalism defined by capitalism. I demonstrate how the protagonist Changez uses storytelling to permeate boundaries of nationalism that isolate the United States from the world through a process of osmosis by allowing an American to know the Other and himself, thereby eliciting a way of being in the world that allows for more flexible and multiple loyalties.