The Nomadic Subject in Teju Cole’s Open City

Space in Teju Cole’s novel, Open City (2011), is inextricably related to vision, in particular the double vision of its main character, as the classic motif of flâneur, revisited and enriched, structures in the narrative. This chapter examines the specific brand of mobility that involves the figure of a Black transcultural flâneur endowed with shifting perspectives and a contrapuntal reading of the present, at the intersection of three continents, and of the categories of race, class, and gender. Teju’s peripatetic character, whose walks translate into ontological and intellectual energy, both single and multiple, independent and interconnected, seems to diffuse a nomadic consciousness that defies socially coded modes of thought and behavior according to Rosi Braidotti. The chapter argues that through the updated figure of the flâneur, Cole’s plotless, post-9/11 novel features the making of what Braidotti calls the nomadic subject, a subject in process, to highlight a cartographic reading of the present in terms of cultural, ethical, and political concerns.