Suchergebnisse

For many cosmopolitans, an emergent global civil society is re-framing the relationship between the universal and particular in world politics in ways that do justice to both. This article disputes this claim, finding that the concept of global civil society shares the same fundamental problem as state sovereignty, namely that it is better at articulating global identity than difference because it reproduces in different form statist attempts to describe a universal structure of particularity. It then argues that to avoid reducing difference to identity while remaining true to the cosmopolitan impulse to ethical universality, that is, to recognition of moral obligations to foreigners, it is necessary to take cosmopolitanism as synonymous with an ethics of hospitality enabling a nondialectical account of identity and difference in cosmopolitanism. As Derrida affirms, hospitality deconstructs the binary of identity and difference in our ethical relations with strangers. This dialectic-defying quality of cosmopolitanism-as-hospitality requires a greater decisionism than dialectical liberal-cosmopolitanism, turning cosmopolitanism away from the pure ethics of its liberal variants and transforming it into an ethicopolitics.

Intro -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- Chapter 1: Setting the Stage: Performing the Divided Self of a New Cosmopolitanism -- The Cosmopolitan Subjectivity of the Divided Self -- Cosmopolitan Theatre: Trying on a New Definition -- On Methodological Considerations -- On the Layout of the Book -- In Lieu of Concluding Remarks -- Bibliography -- Part I: Encounters in Language -- Chapter 2: Dramaturgies of the Self: Staging the Décalage of Vernacular Cosmopolitanism -- Immigration and Multiculturalism in Canada -- Canadian Immigrant Theatre: On Aesthetic and Political Paradigms -- Vinci: On Décalage of I as Other and I as Myself -- Je me souviens: The Décalage of Internal Exile -- Fronteras Americanas: Staging the Décalage of the Border-Crossing -- Trois: On the Heteroglossia of Cultural Décalage -- Sœurs: On the Décalage of Cultural and Technological Mediations -- Bibliography -- Chapter 3: 'Speaking in Tongues': Staging Hospitality of (Non)Translation1 -- On Theatrical Multilingualism and the Practices of Linguistic (Non)Hospitality -- On Vernacular Bilingualism and Theatrical Transcription -- La Trilogie des dragons: On Dramaturgies of Encounter and Relexification -- Betty Quan's Mother Tongue: On the Dramaturgies of Immigrant-Speak -- Polyglotte: On the Dramaturgy of Canada-Speak -- In Sundry Languages: On the Canadian Multilingualism of a Common Space -- Bibliography -- Part II: Encounters in Body -- Chapter 4: Dramaturgies of the Body: Staging Stranger-Fetishism in a Cosmopolitan Solo Performance -- The Body: A Synecdoche of Cosmopolitanism -- Natasha Davis: Staging an Extreme Autobiography of the Divided Self -- On the Embodied Interculturalism of Anita Majumdar's The Fish Eyes Trilogy -- On the Mediated Self of Cosmopolitanism: Wajdi Mouawad's Inflammation du verbe vivre -- Bibliography.

Abstract:Advocates of cosmopolitan ideals, to the extent that they engage with questions of institutional design, typically imagine replicating or refining existing, nation-state models of governance but on an international scale. This essay argues that cosmopolitan ethics need not go hand in hand with international government, and may be better served by a different approach. I explore the concept of degeneracy as a principle of institutional evaluation and design in international politics. Degeneracy is a characteristic of complex systems in which multiple components of the system offer overlapping (but not identical) functions, and is a key component in the robustness of such systems. Non-degenerate systems, by contrast, exhibit fragility in the face of adverse conditions. When applied to systems of governance, degeneracy commends polycentricity and allows for some evaluation of the robustness of different mechanisms and forms of polycentric governance. Cosmopolitan ideals are better served by providing alternatives to existing forms of governance than by building on them. I consider some concrete policy applications of this idea, focusing on immigration and intellectual property.