Cosmopolitanisms

by Bruce Robbins (Editor), Paulo Lemos Horta (Editor), Kwame Anthony Appiah (Afterword)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781479863235
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	07/18/2017
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

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.

Paulo Lemos Horta is Associate Professor of Literature at NYU Abu Dhabi. A writer, translator, and literary historian, his writing has appeared in the Times Literary Supplement. He is the author of Marvellous Thieves: Secret Authors of the Arabian Nights.

Kwame Anthony Appiah, who has been president of the PEN American Center, is the author of The Ethics of Identity, Thinking It Through: An Introduction to Contemporary Philosophy, The Honor Code, and the prize-winning Cosmopolitanism. Raised in Ghana and educated in England, he has taught philosophy on three continents and is currently Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University. Professor Appiah writes the “Ethicist” column in the New York Times Magazine.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction Bruce Robbins Paulo Lemos Horta 1

Part I Justice

1 The Cosmopolitanism of the Poor Silviano Santiago Magdalena Edwards Paulo Lemos Horta 21

2 George Orwell, Cosmopolitanism, and Global Justice Bruce Robbins 40

3 Cosmopolitanism Goes to Class Walter Benn Michaels 59

4 Utonal Life: A Genealogy for Global Ethics Leela Gandhi 65

Part II Solidarity

5 Cosmopolitanism and the Problem of Solidarity David A. Hollinger 91

6 Afropolitanism Achille Mbembe Paulo Lemos Horta 102

7 Cosmopolitan Exchanges: Scenes of Colonial and Postcolonial Reading Elleke Boehmer 108

8 The Cosmopolitan Experience and Its Uses Thomas Bender 116

9 Cosmopolitanism and the Claims of Religious Identity Jean Bethke Elshtain 127

Part III Power

10 The Cosmopolitan Idea and National Sovereignty Robert J. C. Young 135

11 Spectral Sovereignty, Vernacular Cosmopolitans, and Cosmopolitan Memories Homi K. Bhabha 141

12 Cosmopolitan Prejudice Paulo Lemos Horta 153

Part IV Critique

13 A Stoic Critique of Cosmopolitanism Phillip Mitsis 171

14 A Cosmopolitanism of Connections Craig Calhoun 189

15 The Pitfalls and Promises of Afropolitanism Emma Dabiri 201

Part V Spaces

16 City of Youth and Mellow Elusiveness: Accra's Cosmopolitan Constellations Ato Quayson 215

17 The Cosmopolitanisms of Citizenship Jeremy Waldron 230

18 Afropolitan Style and Unusable Global Spaces Ashleigh Harris 240

19 Other Cosmopolitans Yan Haiping 254

Afterword Kwame Anthony Appiah 271

About the Contributors 275

Index 279

Editorial Reviews

"This edited volume reignites many of the incessant debates on cosmopolitanism, its origin, development, andraison dêtre, not only from difference disciplinary traditions and & world views but also from different points in time. . . . The vibrancy of the field is shown by the list of influential critics in this volume, who do not take the notion of cosmopolitanism for granted but engage with it from positions that are both critical and creative."

boundary2

This book, which draws from contributions from north and south, east and west, center and periphery, powerfully reveals the change that the cosmopolitan idea has undergone when globalization, with its dominations, liberations, transportations, inequalities, and hybridities, made it eventually a historical reality. ‘New’ cosmopolitanism is more intense, diverse, conflictual, ambivalent than the ‘old,’ but also more directly involved in the shaping of our common future—for better or worse. Cautiously, but distinctively, the voices heard in this most timely book speak for the better.”-Etienne Balibar,author of Equaliberty

From the Publisher