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9780197819043

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The book's main intellectual contribution is to challenge postcolonial theoretical paradigms that focus on colonialism and capitalism's impact on non-European societies which left them with a sense of belatedness. The Dialectic of Cosmopolitan Time counters this belatedness with a different experience of time the author calls cosmopolitanism. I applaud the author's focus on Persian and Turkish literary and cinematic traditions. Cinema and the novel, borrowed from Europe, are themselves instances of cultural borrowings that affirm the argument that cultural production in Iran and Turkey are not mere instances of mimicry, but rather represent reworkings of non-European art forms into indigenous production that reflects different ways of being modern. * Nasrin Rahimieh, University of California, Irvine * This is an impressive first book that stands to make a significant intervention into debates within postcolonial studies and comparative literature, especially world literature studies. Mathew's premise of rethinking cosmopolitanism and cultural difference through the lens of time and his 'dialectical' alternative to universalism and relativism are not only novel but potentially pivotal, field-changing ideas. * Lital Levy, Princeton University *

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Shaj Mathew is Assistant Professor of English at Hunter College, City University of New York. He is a literary theorist working across Persian, Turkish, Spanish, and English. The Dialectic of Cosmopolitan Time is his first book. Canvassing literature, philosophy, and cinema, his scholarship appears in PMLA, MLQ, Modernism/modernity, Philosophy and Literature, the ACLA State of the Discipline Report, and New Literary History, the latter of which awarded him the 2020 Ralph Cohen Prize.

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