Thirteenth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

On January 27, 2017, when President Trump signed Executive Order 13769, also known as the Muslim Ban, Iranian nationals were unable to travel out of the US because they would not be able to return. Moreover, whereas China does not face as many restrictions as Iran, it has become the target of economic anxieties. Despite optimistic predictions on a friendly and globalized world, political priorities still overrule. Building on Edward Said’s definition of “public intellectuals” and postcolonial critic Lisa Lowe’s concept of “intimacy”, I close read two videos by Yara Elmjouie, an Iranian-American journalist from AJ Plus, titled “Becoming Iranian-American” and “Why Do People Freak Out About MSG in Chinese food?”. I argue that Yara’s videos, by enabling and portraying intimacy between cultures traditionally seen in opposition to each other, produce new knowledge of what it means to be “cosmopolitan”. Cosmopolitanism, an idea inspired by the ancient Greek word for “world citizen”, offers a radical alternative that challenges neoliberalism and neoconservatism in the way it asks individuals what it means to be a part of a community that goes beyond national, linguistic and cultural borders. Not a lot of scholarship has been done on Sino-Iranian-American relations from a cultural perspective. My project aims to fill in this gap, to contribute to new scholarship facilitating dialogues about “cosmopolitanism” that can re-presents ‘axis’ countries like China and Iran, to bring new expressions of individual and national identity, new definitions of ethical possibilities as well as new forms of aesthetic and political engagement.