From imperial to dialogical cosmopolitanism

Abstract

We can now survey the ruins of a Babelian tower of discourse about cosmopolitanism. We speak of 'elite travel lounge,' 'Davos,' 'banal' as well as of 'reflexive,' 'really existing,' 'patriotic,' and 'horizontal' cosmopolitanisms. Here, an attempt is made to extract what is normative and ideal in the concept of cosmopolitanism by foregrounding the epistemic and moral dimensions of this attitude toward the world and other cultures. Kant, in a rather unexpected way, is profiled as the exemplification of what is here called 'imperial' cosmopolitanism, which is both blind and dismissive of its own material conditions of possibility. Then, through a discussion of the works of Nussbaum, Appiah, Mignolo, Butler, Benhabib, and Beck, the author elaborates a version of cosmopolitanism that is grounded, enlightened, and reflexive, which corrects and supersedes Kant's own Eurocentric cosmopolitanism. We do not live in an age of cosmopolitanism, but in an age of cosmopolitization. Democratic iterations that are jurisgenerative are matched at the global level by cosmopolitan iterations that are both jurisgenerative and affect generating. © 2009 E. Mendieta.