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Cosmopolitanism
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Edited by Carol A. Breckenridge, Sheldon Pollock, Homi K. Bhabha and Dipesh Chakrabarty
Duke University Press
Due/Published
April 2002, 260 pages,
paper
ISBN
0822328992
As the final installment of Public Culture's Millennial Quartet, Cosmopolitanism addresses the question of whether cosmopolitanism--ways of thinking, feeling, and acting beyond one's particular society--is simply the universalism of a Western particular. With contributions from distinguished scholars in disciplines such as literary studies, art history, South Asian studies, and anthropology, this volume recenters the theory and history of translocal political aspirations and cultural ideas from the traditional Western vantage point to areas outside Europe, such as South Asia, China, and Africa. By examining new archives, framing new theoretical formulations, and suggesting new possibilities of political practice, the contributors actively expand the meaning of the term cosmopolitanism. On the one hand, cosmopolitanism may be taken to promise a form of supraregional political solidarity, but on the other, these essays argue, it may erode precisely those cultural differences that derive their meaning from a particular place and tradition. Given that most cosmopolitan political formations--from the Roman imperium and European imperialism to contemporary globalization--have been coercive and unequal, can there be a noncoercive and egalitarian cosmopolitan politics? Finally, the volume demonstrates how cosmopolitanism may simultaneously promise a universalism of knowledge and an unwarranted generalization of a European idea or practice. This volume replaces the earlier journal issue of Public Culture, published in the spring of 2001. Contributors. Ackbar Abbas, Arjun Appadurai, Homi K. Bhabha, T. K. Biaya, Carol A. Breckenridge, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Mamadou Diouf, Wu Hung, Walter D. Mignolo, Sheldon Pollock Contents Cosmopolitanisms--Sheldon Pollock, Homi K. Bhabha, Carol A. Breckenridge, and Dipesh Chakrabarty
Cosmopolitanism and Vernacular in History--Sheldon Pollock
Spectral Housing and Urban Cleansing: Notes on Millennial Mumbai--Arjun Appadurai
Universalism and Belonging in the Logic of Capital--Dipesh Chakrabarty
The Senegalese Murid Trade Diaspora and the Making of a Vernacular Cosmopolitanism--Mamadou Diouf
"Crushing the Pistachio": Eroticism in Senegal and the Art of Ousmane Ndiaya Dago--T. K. Biaya
The Many Faces of Cosmo-polis: Border Thinking and Critical Cosmopolitanism--Walter D. Mignolo
Zhang Dali's Dialogue; Conversation with a City--Wu Hung
Cosmopolitan De-scriptions: Shanghai and Hong Kong--Ackbar Abbas Contributors
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Review
Amid the current and frequently contradictory notions of globalization, nationalism, and multiculturalism lies the slippery and difficult-to-define idea of cosmopolitanism. Drawing on a variety of examples and disciplines, the essays in this collection offer a much needed discussion of a multitude of cosmoplitanisms. The contributors look beyond Western definitions of cosmopolitanism that privilege universalist notions of culture and the individual. The essays challenge the notion of cosmopolitanism as a result of discrete cultures melding, arguing instead that cultures themselves are formed as a result of mixing traditions and ideas. In the Introduction, the editors write, ". . . cosmopolitanism is not a circle created by culture diffused from a center, but instead . . . centers are everywhere and circumferences nowhere." In their explorations of various cosmopolitanisms and their reworkings of the concept, the contributors also envision political possibilities that offer paths to a more egalitarian society. The fourth in the excellent Millennial Quartet series from Duke University Press, Cosmopolitanism offers an innovative and bold re-imagining of the cosmopolitanism that thoughtfully critiques Western notions. To read about the other volumes in the Millennial Quartet: |
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