http://ant.sagepub.

com/
Anthropological Theory
http://ant.sagepub.com/content/4/4/497.citation
The online version of this article can be found at:

DOI: 10.1177/146349960400400417
2004 4: 497 Anthropological Theory
Thomas Fillitz
Book review: Cosmopolitanism. A Millenial Quartet Book

Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com
can be found at: Anthropological Theory Additional services and information for

http://ant.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Email Alerts:

http://ant.sagepub.com/subscriptions Subscriptions:
http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Reprints:

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Permissions:

What is This?

- Nov 19, 2004 Version of Record >>

at SUB Goettingen on December 13, 2013 ant.sagepub.com Downloaded from at SUB Goettingen on December 13, 2013 ant.sagepub.com Downloaded from
Carol A. Breckenridge, Sheldon Pollock, Homi K. Bhabha and Dipesh Chakrabarty, eds.
2002. Cosmopolitanism. A Millenial Quartet Book. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
pp. 241. ISBN: (pbk) 0 8223 2899 2. Price: 16.95.
One of the premises of this collection of essays is that cosmopolitanism should be an
entirely open and unspecied category. Responding to this assumption, and in order to
extend the debates beyond the topics location in European thought, the editors have
brought together contributions from various sites and disciplines (language and literary
history, critical intellectual history, ethnography, urban studies, architectural history, and
art history). A common frame of reference for all of them is constituted within the three
forces of nationalism, globalization, and multiculturalism.
Referring to the notions different meanings over time, the editors emphasize in the
introduction that today cosmopolitanism is predominantly represented by philanthropic
individuals like Mother Theresa. The authors propose, however, another concept of
cosmopolitanism, one grounded on our need to learn to live tenaciously in terrains of
historic and cultural transition (p. 4). They consider as cosmopolitans the victims of
modernity (p. 6): refugees, people of the diaspora, migrants, and exiles groups that
are distanced from any national belonging. Cosmopolitanism from such a viewpoint is
more a translational process of cultures in-betweenness (p. 6).
Paralleling processes that led to the idea of the plurality of feminisms, the editors
propose the concept in the plural: cosmopolitanisms the plurality of modes and
histories . . . that comprise cosmopolitan practice and history (p. 8). They, by approach-
ing the topic from heterogeneous perspectives, support the idea that various cosmopoli-
tanisms existed and exist in multiple centres of the world. Pollock compares the spread
of ancient Sanskrit and Latin literatures to show two cosmopolitanisms, one voluntarist
the other coercive. Ackbar Abbas connects the cosmopolitanisms of Shanghai and Hong
Kong, showing that the decline of the former after 1947 enabled the resurgence of the
latter. The cosmopolitanism of Shanghai in the 1930s was built in a space of multi-
valence, whereas Hong Kongs in the late 1980s was a response to a space of disappear-
ance.
The assumption of historically and geoculturally different multiculturalisms leads to
the thesis that we already are and have always been cosmopolitan, though we may not
always have known it (p. 12). Processes such as ethnicization and nationalism most of
the time impede our awareness of this. Cosmopolitanism is not an abstract idea but
rather the site of a politics of cosmopolitanism (pp. 12ff.). By focusing on spectral
housing the multitude of pavement dwellers and the prevalence of street commerce,
Arjun Appadurai shows how Indias leading political party has abused the disjunct
relationship between cash and capital since the 1970s to create the idea of a puried
(Hindu) national space and to decosmopolitaniz[e] Bombay, transforming it into
Mumbai (p. 78).
Two concepts seem specically striking: Walter Mignolos critical and dialogical
cosmopolitanism and Abbass arbitrage. Mignolo reconceives cosmopolitanism from
the perspective of coloniality. He suggests that negotiating the coloniality of power and
the dilemmas of colonial difference should lead to what he calls diversality (p. 181)
instead of to another universality. Abbass notion is derived from an economic concept
of capitalizing, and refers to everyday strategies for negotiating the transnational spaces
Book reviews
497
06 Reviews (jr/t) 5/11/04 8:46 am Page 497
at SUB Goettingen on December 13, 2013 ant.sagepub.com Downloaded from
created by global capital, in other words for getting local advantage from the inter-
connectedness of the vernacular and the global ow.
The hypothesis of our fundamental but often unnoticed cosmopolitanism (p. 12),
seductive as it is, invites critical reections. It conveys the impression that cosmo-
politanism can be seen as synonymous with the Creole character of culture and leads me
to wonder whether the concept of culture as creolized implies that we, the people, are
automatically cosmopolitan with only politics hindering our experience of this?
Another question concerns the concept that exiles and migrants are the cosmopoli-
tans of today. This implies that movement/displacement determines the loss of the
feeling and of the practices of national belonging. Such a loss would position the
refugee/exile/migrant positively as a subject freed of the one tradition and empowered
to move among whichever traditions he chooses.
The whole book challenges rstly by its notion of cosmopolitanism at large. Moreover,
the concept of the politics of cosmopolitanism enables readers to consider cosmo-
politanisms connection with social and, above all, power relations. If the emphasis to
date has been on cosmopolitanism as the pleasure of repeated immersion into other
cultures, here the stress is on other dimensions: such experiences may be forced on people
and societies (p. 211), cosmopolitan may be given although framed by indifference. The
powerful momentum of this multi-disciplinary collusion raises questions about projects
of heterogeneous conviviality in the context of power relations both in the local and
beyond.
Thomas Fillitz
University of Vienna, Austria
[email: Thomas.llitz@univie.ac.at]
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY 4(4)
498
06 Reviews (jr/t) 5/11/04 8:46 am Page 498
at SUB Goettingen on December 13, 2013 ant.sagepub.com Downloaded from