Cosmopolitan or Creole Lives? Globalized Oceans and Insular Identities

Abstract

To understand the historical dynamics of the cosmopolitan Indian Ocean region requires a comparative engagement with both the notions of cosmopolitanism and creolization. Although both presuppose patterns of movement and degrees of mixing, the nouns cosmopolitan and Creole and the realities they connote are likely to be seen as polar opposites, belonging to incommensurable coordinates of time and space. The challenge is to bring into dialogue intellectual histories that have been viewed as distinct, since the idea of the cosmopolis evokes a highly literate, urbane, and enlightened polity, whereas the oral cultures of a Creole world tend to be associated with superstition and primitive rituals. If we rethink cosmopolitanism and creolization from the perspective of the insular regions of the Indian Ocean, new possibilities emerge for comparison and redefinition of what it means to be a Creole cosmopolitan who participates actively in the construction of cultural meanings through technologies of oral, print,...