identity formation

i am unhappy to announce that my head injury has set me back on my work on this project!!! it still hurts quite a bit to look at words on a page or on a screen for extended periods of time and after a little bit of reading the words are swimming, my head is pounding, and my eyes are strained. i apologize that my progress has more or less been halted-i want to rest my brain, doctor's orders, but i also really need to try to starting this paper.

my working thesis has been that the African post-colonial subject cannot comfortably develop a cosmopolitan identity because of the uneven power relations between old colonial powers and the colonized world. i have been reading appiah's "the ethics of identity," which has helped me understand the idea of cosmopolitanism in a greater depth: where the idea finds its roots, how one might go about envisioning a truly cosmopolitan identity, the questions it raises, and what it means to come from a place but to belong to the whole world. i want to write this paper as a critique of cosmopolitanism, since i think americanah demonstrates the challenges that african post-colonial subjects face when they migrate to the west and attempt to find belonging in western society. i think i'll use the voices of ifem, obinze, and aunty uju to draw a clearer picture of the ways that the cosmopolitan ideal is still predicated on western universalism, which leads me to the question of whether or not western universalism is just a descendant of western imperialism (and if it is, the post-colonial subject is destined for disappointment when they exchange african nationalism for a cosmopolitan identity). 

sorry-i know an outline would be preferable-just trying to heal!