Scaling the Gifberge: Cosmopolitanism, Cartography and Space in Zoë Wicomb's You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town

Abstract

1Despite its title, You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town has largely not been read from the perspective of its engagement with spatial politics. Focusing on the stories' representations of cartography and cosmopolitan space, this essay argues that they produce a profoundly ambivalent sense of cosmopolitanism, one that is acutely aware of the difficulties of trying to shift scales from the local to the global, and of the loss of affect that this shift entails. Wicomb, though representing cosmopolitan space as one of escape from national politics, is wary of the loss of intimacy that cosmopolitanism entails, and seeks to suggest an in-between scale that will allow for global affiliation and local affection. This search, undertaken by her character Frieda Shenton, aligns Wicomb closely with what Walter Mignolo terms “critical cosmopolitanism” or Bhabha et al. designate “cosmofeminism” – both terms that describe an attempt to redefine the scale of cosmopolitanism along more intimate lines.