Cosmopolitanisms

With an Afterword by Kwame Anthony Appiah An indispensable collection that re-examines what it means to belong in the world. "Where are you from?" The word cosmopolitan was first used as a way of evading exactly this question, when Diogenes the Cynic declared himself a “kosmo-polites,” or citizen of the world. Cosmopolitanism displays two impulses—on the one hand, a detachment from one’s place of origin, while on the other, an assertion of membership in some larger, more compelling collective. Cosmopolitanisms works from the premise that there is more than one kind of cosmopolitanism, a plurality that insists cosmopolitanism can no longer stand as a single ideal against which all smaller loyalties and forms of belonging are judged. Rather, cosmopolitanism can be defined as one of many possible modes of life, thought, and sensibility that are produced when commitments and loyalties are multiple and overlapping. Featuring essays by major thinkers, including Homi Bhabha, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Thomas Bender, Leela Gandhi, Ato Quayson, and David Hollinger, among others, this collection asks what these plural cosmopolitanisms have in common, and how the cosmopolitanisms of the underprivileged might serve the ethical values and political causes that matter to their members. In addition to exploring the philosophy of Kant and the space of the city, this volume focuses on global justice, which asks what cosmopolitanism is good for, and on the global south, which has often been assumed to be an object of cosmopolitan scrutiny, not itself a source or origin of cosmopolitanism. This book gives a new meaning to belonging and its ground-breaking arguments call for deep and necessary discussion and discourse. Paulo Lemos Horta is Assistant Professor of Literature at New York University Abu Dhabi. He is co-editor of the Everyman’s Library Arabian Nights and author of Marvellous Thieves: Secret Authors of the Arabian Nights. Kwame Anthony Appiah is Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University. Among his many works are The Ethics of Identity (2005) and Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (2006). Bruce Robbins is Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. He is the editor of Cosmopolites and the author of Perpetual War: Cosmopolitanism from the Viewpoint of Inequality. Contents 6 Acknowledgments 8 Introduction 10 PART I. JUSTICE 28 1. The Cosmopolitanism of the Poor by Silviano Santiago 30 2. George Orwell, Cosmopolitanism, and Global Justice by Bruce Robbins 49 3. Cosmopolitanism Goes to Class by Walter Benn Michaels 68 4. Utonal Life: A Genealogy for Global Ethics by Leela Gandhi 74 PART II. SOLIDARITY 98 5. Cosmopolitanism and the Problem of Solidarity by David A. Hollinger 100 6. Afropolitanism by Achille Mbembe 111 7. Cosmopolitan Exchanges: Scenes of Colonial and Postcolonial Reading by Elleke Boehmer 117 8. The Cosmopolitan Experience and Its Uses by Thomas Bender 125 9. Cosmopolitanism and the Claims of Religious Identity by Jean Bethke Elshtain 136 PART III. POWER 142 10. The Cosmopolitan Idea and National Sovereignty by Robert J. C. Young 144 11. Spectral Sovereignty, Vernacular Cosmopolitans, and Cosmopolitan Memories by Homi K. Bhabha 150 12. Cosmopolitan Prejudice by Paulo Lemos Horta 162 PART IV. CRITIQUE 178 13. A Stoic Critique of Cosmopolitanism by Phillip Mitsis 180 14. A Cosmopolitanism of Connections by Craig Calhoun 198 15. The Pitfalls and Promises of Afropolitanism by Emma Dabiri 210 PART V. SPACES 222 16. City of Youth and Mellow Elusiveness: Accra’s Cosmopolitan Constellations by Ato Quayson 224 17. The Cosmopolitanisms of Citizenship by Jeremy Waldron 239 18. Afropolitan Style and Unusable Global Spaces by Ashleigh Harris 249 19. Other Cosmopolitans by Yan Haiping 263 Afterword by Kwame Anthony Appiah 280 About the Contributors 284 Index 288