ABSTRACT
Foreign Gods, Inc examines how perceived cultural difference is commodified and how cosmopolitan understandings of the global cultural marketplace potentially obscure inequalities in the name of fostering cosmopolitan ethics. Even as Foreign Gods, Inc attends to how perceived difference is valued in the postcolonial, postmodern cultural marketplace, it is just as attentive to how, often, it is devalued. Foreign Gods, Inc thus suggests a more cosmopolitan view of the global cultural marketplace itself: namely, one that challenges the devaluation of orality while simultaneously resisting its commodification. Okey Ndibe’s novel, however, is somewhat skeptical of arguments premised on greater inclusivity via the circulation of commodified cultural objects as specific to a particular ethnicity, nation, continent, or other imagined community. Ndibe’s critique of the minimization of oral authority presents a challenge to the reader of a novel that both revels in and is in part marketed through its representation of oral cultures.
