After Cosmopolitanism

At a time when social and political reality seems to move away from the practice of cosmopolitanism, whilst being in serious need of a new international framework to regulate global interaction, what are the new definitions and practices of cosmopolitanism? Including contributions from leading figures across the humanities and social sciences, After Cosmopolitanism takes up this question as its central challenge. Its core argument is the idea that our globalised condition forms the heart of contemporary cosmopolitan claims, which do not refer to a transcendental ideal, but are rather immanent to the material conditions of global interdependence. But to what extent do emerging definitions of cosmopolitanism contribute to new representative democratic models of governance? The present volume argues that a radical transformation of cosmopolitanism is already ongoing and that more effort is needed to take stock of transformations which are both necessary and possible. To this end, After Cosmopolitanism calls for an understanding of cosmopolitanism that is more attentive to the material reality of our social and political situation and less focused on linguistic analyses of its metaphorical implications. It is the call for a cosmopolitanism that is also a cosmopolitics.

In this book, Michael Keith argues that both racial divisions and intercultural dialogue can only be understood in the context of the urban cities that gave them birth, and considers how race is played out in the worlds most eminent cities.

From climate change, debt, and refugee crises to energy security, environmental disasters, and terrorism, the events that lead nightly newscasts and drive public policy demand a global perspective. In the twentieth century the world sought solutions through formal institutions of international governance such as the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, and the World Bank, but present-day responses to global realities are often more provisional, improvisational, and contingent. Tracing this uneven history in order to identify principal actors, contesting ideologies, and competing rhetoric, Negative Cosmopolitanism challenges the Kantian ideal of cosmopolitanism as the precondition for a perpetual global peace. Uniting literary scholars with researchers working on contemporary problems and those studying related issues of the past – including slavery, industrial capitalism, and corporate imperialism – essays in this volume scrutinize the entanglement of cosmopolitanism within expanding networks of trade and global capital from the eighteenth century to the present. By doing so, the contributors pinpoint the ways in which whole populations have been unwillingly caught up in a capitalist reality that has little in common with the earlier ideals of cosmopolitanism. A model for provoking new and necessary questions about neoliberalism, biopolitics, colonialism, citizenship, and xenophobia, Negative Cosmopolitanism establishes a fresh take on the representation of globalization and modern life in history and literature. Contributors Include Timothy Brennan (University of Minnesota), Juliane Collard (University of British Columbia), Mike Dillon (California State University, Fullerton), Sneja Gunew (University of British Columbia), Dina Gusejnova (University of Sheffield), Heather Latimer (University of British Columbia), Pamela McCallum (University of Calgary), Geordie Miller (Dalhousie University), Dennis Mischke (Universität Stuttgart), Peter Nyers (McMaster University), Liam O’Loughlin (Pacific Lutheran University), Crystal Parikh (New York University), Mark Simpson (University of Alberta), Melissa Stephens (Vancouver Island University), and Paul Ugor (Illinois State University).

From climate change, debt, and refugee crises to energy security, environmental disasters, and terrorism, the events that lead nightly newscasts and drive public policy demand a global perspective. In the twentieth century the world sought solutions through formal institutions of international governance such as the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, and the World Bank, but present-day responses to global realities are often more provisional, improvisational, and contingent. Tracing this uneven history in order to identify principal actors, contesting ideologies, and competing rhetoric, Negative Cosmopolitanism challenges the Kantian ideal of cosmopolitanism as the precondition for a perpetual global peace. Uniting literary scholars with researchers working on contemporary problems and those studying related issues of the past – including slavery, industrial capitalism, and corporate imperialism – essays in this volume scrutinize the entanglement of cosmopolitanism within expanding networks of trade and global capital from the eighteenth century to the present. By doing so, the contributors pinpoint the ways in which whole populations have been unwillingly caught up in a capitalist reality that has little in common with the earlier ideals of cosmopolitanism. A model for provoking new and necessary questions about neoliberalism, biopolitics, colonialism, citizenship, and xenophobia, Negative Cosmopolitanism establishes a fresh take on the representation of globalization and modern life in history and literature. Contributors Include Timothy Brennan (University of Minnesota), Juliane Collard (University of British Columbia), Mike Dillon (California State University, Fullerton), Sneja Gunew (University of British Columbia), Dina Gusejnova (University of Sheffield), Heather Latimer (University of British Columbia), Pamela McCallum (University of Calgary), Geordie Miller (Dalhousie University), Dennis Mischke (Universität Stuttgart), Peter Nyers (McMaster University), Liam O’Loughlin (Pacific Lutheran University), Crystal Parikh (New York University), Mark Simpson (University of Alberta), Melissa Stephens (Vancouver Island University), and Paul Ugor (Illinois State University).

Leading experts and rising stars in the field explore whether cosmopolitanism becomes impossible in the theoretical framework that assumed the absence of a final ground. The questions that the volume addresses refer exactly to the foundational predicament that characterizes cosmopolitanism: How is it possible to think cosmopolitanism after the critique of foundations? Can cosmopolitanism be conceived without an ‘ultimate’ ground? Can we construct theories of cosmopolitanism without some certainties about the entire world or about the cosmos? Should we continue to look for foundations of cosmopolitan rights, norms and values? Alternatively, should we aim towards cosmopolitanism without foundations or towards cosmopolitanism with ‘contingent foundations’? Could cosmopolitanism be the very attempt to come to terms with the failure of ultimate grounds? Written accessibly and contributing to key debates on political philosophy, and social and political thought, this volume advances the concept of post-foundational cosmopolitanism by bridging the polarised approaches to the concept.

“Cosmopolitanism contains some of the most polished and enviably well-written chapters of literary criticism that have ever come my way. Shaw’s readings are critically informed and theoretically sophisticated, yet at the same time remarkably lucid and clear. This is a work of very fine, well-balanced, and – for a first book – astonishingly mature scholarship.” — Prof Berthold Schoene, Head of Research and Knowledge Exchange, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK “The first study to fully appreciate contemporary literature's engagement with cosmopolitanism. A persuasive and articulate engagement with questions of ethics, community, transnationalism and cultural identity, it's an essential read for anyone interested in the contribution of contemporary fiction to our world today”. — Dr Sara Upstone, Principal Lecturer in English Literature, Kingston University, UK. This study of cosmopolitanism in contemporary British and American fiction identifies several authors who forge new and intensified dialogues between local experience and global flows. The twenty-first century has been marked by an unprecedented intensification in globalisation, transnational mobility and technological change. The theories and values of cosmopolitanism will be argued to provide a direct response to ways of being-in-relation to others and answer urgent fears surrounding cultural convergence. The four chapters examine works by David Mitchell, Zadie Smith, Teju Cole, Dave Eggers and Hari Kunzru. The study will demonstrate how these authors imagine new cosmopolitan modes of belonging and point towards the need for an emergent and affirmative cosmopolitics attuned to the diversity and complexity of twenty-first century globality. The study assumes an interdisciplinary approach and will appeal to literature academics, under-/ postgraduate students, and researchers interested in the culture and politics of contemporary life.

Addressing perspectives about who "we" are, the importance of place and home, and the many differences that still separate individuals, this volume reimagines cosmopolitanism in light of our differences, including the different places we all inhabit and the many places where we do not feel at home. Beginning with the two-part recognition that the world is a smaller place and that it is indeed many worlds, Cosmopolitanism and Place critically explores what it means to assert that all people are citizens of the world, everywhere in the world, as well as persons bounded by a universal and shared morality.

Winner of the National Communication Association's International and Intercultural Communication Division's 2014 Outstanding Authored Book of the Year award This book engages the notion of cosmopolitanism as it applies to intercultural communication, which itself is undergoing a turn in its focus from post-positivistic research towards critical/interpretive and postcolonial perspectives, particularly as globalization informs more of the current and future research in the area. It emphasizes the postcolonial perspective in order to raise critical consciousness about the complexities of intercultural communication in a globalizing world, situating cosmopolitanism—the notion of global citizenship—as a multilayered lens for research. Cosmopolitanism as a theoretical repertoire provides nuanced descriptions of what it means to be and communicate as a global citizen, how to critically study interconnectedness within and across cultures, and how to embrace differences without glossing over them. Moving intercultural communication studies towards the global in complex and nuanced ways, this book highlights crucial links between globalization, transnationalism, postcolonialism, cosmopolitanism, social injustice and intercultural communication, and will help in the creation of classroom spaces devoted to exploring these links. It also engages the links between theory and praxis in order to move towards intercultural communication pedagogy and research that simultaneously celebrates and interrogates issues of cultural difference with the aim of creating continuity rather than chasms. In sum, this book orients intercultural communication scholarship firmly towards the critical and postcolonial, while still allowing the incorporation of traditional intercultural communication concepts, thereby preparing students, scholars, educators and interculturalists to communicate ethically in a world that is simultaneously global and local.