Subaltern cosmopolitanism: concept

and approaches
Minhao Zeng
Abstract
Cosmopolitanism is back, proclaimed David Harvey presciently in 2000 (Harvey,
2000: 529). In the face of injustice, inequality and violence emerging from
globalization processes, the last decade has witnessed a cascading interest in the
vision of a world community in which sameness and difference are harmoniously
dealt with. Across the humanities and social sciences, there have emerged multiple
ways of understanding what exactly cosmopolitanism means for research. To push
this concept to greater rigour, scholars have tried to demarcate its conceptual
boundaries by underlining its conjunctural nature (Werbner, 2006). Thus we have
such notions as rooted cosmopolitanism, working-class cosmopolitanism, discrepant
cosmopolitanism, ethnic cosmopolitanism, and vernacular cosmopolitanism. Of all
these conjunctural terms, subaltern cosmopolitanism has gained noteworthy atten-
tion of late. In one of her articles published in 2010 about the old baggage and
missing luggage of cosmopolitan theory, for example, Glick Schiller claims that the
possibilities of strengthening cosmopolitan theory lie in a further development of
a subaltern cosmopolitanism (2010: 414). In this Viewpoint, I will rst present an
overview of how subaltern cosmopolitanism has been deployed by scholars, and
then evaluate its particular purchase in cosmopolitan studies, and nally suggest
fortifying the critical sinew of this concept by drawing on conversations about other
weighty issues that concern the humanities and social sciences of today.
Keywords: subaltern, cosmopolitanism, relational spatial politics
An overview
In the twinkling of an eye, it seems, subaltern cosmopolitanism has been
pushed to the proscenium of cosmopolitan studies. It begins to be employed by
scholars on various occasions. For all its sphere of force, the shape of subaltern
cosmopolitanism remains nebulous. Responding to the immediate need to
straighten out the varied uses of this concept, I will give a brief survey of recent
representative studies that have deployed subaltern cosmopolitanism, which I
believe can shed some light on the contours of this much-used notion. My
literature review suggests that the studies on subaltern cosmopolitanism have
generally pursued their inquiry along two trajectories: some turn us inwards by
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The Sociological Review, Vol. 62, 137148 (2014) DOI: 10.1111/1467-954X.12137
2014 The Author. The Sociological Review 2014 The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review. Published
by John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, 02148,
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focusing on the coexistence of ethnically, racially and culturally different
groups in a particular place; and others direct us outwards by locating their
discussions within broad translocal and transnational frames. Neither mixing
in a place nor global linkages, true enough, will automatically produce a
subaltern politics, but scholars are interested in how new patterns of human
association and new operations of labour and capital produce opportunities
for new forms of connectivity and solidarity for the disenfranchised.
The rst approach to subaltern cosmopolitanismis exemplied by The Other
Global City (Mayaram, 2009). An outcome of a project entitled Communities
in Interaction coordinated by Mayaram about living together between differ-
ent ethnic groups in the urban contexts of Asia, this book exhibits a shared
fascination with the city in cosmopolitan studies. However, this is not to imply
that cosmopolitanism is a uniquely urban phenomenon. Already, there is a
growing eagerness to foray into small towns and rural settings for compelling
and intimate forms of cosmopolitanism (Besnier, 2004; Notar, 2008; Yeoh and
Lin, 2012). Nor does this suggest that urban environments per se guarantee
cosmopolitanism, as there are also no fewer examples of the outwardly smooth
fabric of urban coexistence being scratched and even torn apart by
uncompromised differences, from the non-violent encapsulation in ethnically
exclusive fellowships among Akan-speaking Ghanaian Methodists in London
(Fumani, 2010) to the late-Soviet era violence towards Armenians in the
much-heralded cosmopolitan city of Baku (Grant, 2010). But the multiplicity of
differences and the intensity of interactions across ethnic, racial and cultural
lines make the city an especially promising site to search for seeds and mani-
festations of subaltern cosmopolitanism. In this project, a key question
Mayaramexpects her contributors toelucidate is whether there are possibilities
of subaltern cosmopolitanism in the citys fortressed neighborhoods and
ghettos that house the working-class poor, refugees, and migrants (2009: xiv).
For Mayaram herself, she disagrees with Mike Daviss bleak view of the urban
slum as a Darwinist jungle, which she points out is a contemporary refection
of the long-standing European panic for the mob. She argues that rather than
a mere site of prejudice, conict, and exclusion, the slum is also a place of
cohabitation and conictual coexistence, where difference is encountered and
confronted, hate speech articulated but also negotiated (2009: 23). Citing
studies which draw attention to the ashes of subaltern cosmopolitanism in
Indian slum areas cohabited by Hindus and Muslims, Mayaram contends that
newsubjectivities, coalitions, and alliances relating to interethnic relations can
arise in multiethnic city-slums, and celebrates this form of cosmopolitanism as
subaltern visions for democracy, citizenship, and justice (2009: 24).
Mayarams proposition about subaltern cosmopolitanism has been directly
taken up by two project contributors Yeh and Guan, though with different
emphasis on subaltern. Yeh, through his ethnographic research, nds that the
peaceful coexistence of different cultural, ethnic and religious groups has been
present in Lhasa since at least the seventeenth century; but he attributes the
peaceful coexistence in the pre-1950s period (before the incorporation of
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Central Tibet into the Peoples Republic of China) largely to the Tibetan
Buddhist principle of compassion, charity and self-restraint, and that in the
post-1950s phase mainly to the states hegemonic management device minzu
tuanjie (in English, national harmony) adopted by the Chinese Communist
Party to weaken the force of Tibetan splittism. During the several open
Tibetan antagonisms towards the Chinese Han in Lhasa in the post-1950s
period, some Tibetans, in accordance with their long-cherished religious prin-
ciple, call for a distinction between the actions of the government and those of
Han individuals and demonstrate great compassion to the Han as fellow
human beings. On these occasions, the Buddhist principle of compassion,
which was a great source of interethnic and intercultural harmony in the
pre-1950s period, is both a force of resistance and a cause for which other acts
of resistance to the state are undertaken (Yeh, 2009: 69). It is due to this
resistant nature, which transgresses the ofcial order, that Yeh regards the
Buddhist ethos of cosmopolitanism as subaltern cosmopolitanism. Guan,
within Michel de Certeaus analytical framework of micro-space, studies the
street life of Little India in Kuala Lumpur. He discovers two kinds of cosmo-
politanism at work in this locale: the state-sponsored and commercial-driven
rhetoric of the Malaysian brand of multiculturalism, which actually glosses
over much of the complex historical process; and its contrapuntal other, sub-
altern cosmopolitanism, which is characterized by labyrinthine trajectories of
ordinary people in everyday life. Guan regards the latter as subaltern cosmo-
politanism because as a form of interethnic convivial living, it has a certain
rustic and chaotic charm (2009: 141) growing spontaneously from below
which state imaginings and market forces (2009: 154) exercised from above
tend to repress for technocratic management. Unlike Mayaram, who suggests
using urban slums as the site of inquiry for subaltern cosmopolitanism, Yeh
and Guan do not dene subaltern along the lines of class and economic
condition, but all three scholars look to subaltern cosmopolitanism as an
antidote to the clash of civilizations and place hopes on its ability to help
restore to memory suppressed and silenced other urban imaginaries
(Mayaram, 2009: 21), which are not in the general circulation of both Western
and non-Western government-monitored discourses.
The second approach to subaltern cosmopolitanism has as well been
espoused by scholars from a plurality of methodological perspectives.
Gidwanis and Santoss conceptions of subaltern cosmopolitanism have been
especially inuential in this regard. Gidwani views subaltern cosmopolitanism
as heterogeneous practices of thinking, border crossing, and connecting that
are transgressive of the established order and that shame and expose its
hermetic and de-politicized grids of Difference as political relations of differ-
ence (2006: 19). He backs up this denition with a long anecdotal account of
the life of an American domestic worker named Connie, whose outlook and
practice, he argues, illustrate the possibilities of subaltern cosmopolitanism.
Siding with working-class people, Connie has her own way of protesting against
consumerist capitalism and American imperialism, such as living frugally to
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minimize her participation in the money economy and protecting the locals
from paramilitary death squads by accompanying them on buses as a white
during her stay in Guatemala. Yet for all her working-class international
inclination, Connie has no idea of working-class solidarity whatsoever. She,
together with her numerous subaltern counterparts geographically scattered
throughout the world, is tenacious in the individual ght to claim rights to the
city but not powerful enoughtodent the forces of exploitation, marginalization,
and normalization. Having realized the fragility of this type of subaltern
struggle, Gidwani calls for some sort of cosmopolitanism that enables connec-
tivity betweenthe disenfranchised (2006: 18). He envisions cosmopolitanismas
a channel toaccumulate geographically dispersedenergy of subalterngroups to
formthe sort of force that can elicit desired responses and conducts (2006: 18).
If Gidwani approaches subaltern cosmopolitanism from the individual
level, Santos starts from the organizational level in his examination of how the
vast set of local and national confrontational politics are networked in ways
that echo social struggles elsewhere in the world. Santos argues, though it is
infeasible to bring all anti-exclusion struggles under a single banner as social
exclusion has different origins, through communication, mutual understand-
ing and co-operation (2002: 459), it is possible for different struggles to form
a kind of counter-hegemonic globalization against unbridled expansion of
global capitalism. Santos regards this loose bundle of projects and struggles
as subaltern cosmopolitanism, or cosmopolitanism of the oppressed (2002:
459). According to Santos, traditional cosmopolitanism has always been used
by particular social groups to pursue their interests under the guise of uncon-
ditional inclusiveness. Subaltern cosmopolitanism, therefore, is a corrective to
hegemonic cosmopolitan projects. Some examples of subaltern cosmopolitan-
ism include the World Social Forum, international networks of alternative
legal services, and artistic movements against imperialist cultural values.
Santos also points out that as an oppositional variety (2002: 459), subaltern
cosmopolitanism rejects unied theory. If we really want a theory of some
kind, the theory should be thickly descriptive rather than prescriptive. It
should be a theory of translation which can help create mutual understanding,
mutual intelligibility among them [disenfranchised people] so that they may
benet from the experiences of others and network with them (Santos, 2002:
463). For me, in reviewing previous studies, my task is not to work out an exact
denition of subaltern cosmopolitanism. Rather, it is for me to ask how this
concept has helped scholars theorize social and political agency of a wide
range of peripheral subjectivities and broaden the possibilities of resistance
and empowerment against hegemony of various kinds.
The critical purchase of subaltern cosmopolitanism
The sudden popularity of the notion of subaltern cosmopolitanism is not a
happenstance but due to its capability to respond to a number of powerful
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turns in current cosmopolitan studies. First, subaltern cosmopolitanism reso-
nates with the elds shift of emphasis from cosmopolitanism of elites to
non-elite modes and sites of cosmopolitanism (Hannerz, 2004: 75). A
common approach to non-elite forms of cosmopolitanism is through ethno-
graphic research. Two early studies have helped pave the way for later ethno-
graphically grounded studies in the eld: Cliffords Travelling Cultures (1992)
and Werbners Global Pathways (1999). Examining a wide range of travellers
who have been discursively excluded from the proper traveller, such as serv-
ants, helpers, and companions, Clifford proposes the concept of discrepant
cosmopolitanisms to reect specic histories of economic, political, and cul-
tural interaction (1992: 108). By contrast, Werbner, in her case study of cos-
mopolitanism manifested in Pakistani migrant workers in Britain, argues for a
recognition of the class dimensions of the travelling of labour and refers to the
sparkles of cosmopolitanism she nds in Pakistani workers as working-class
cosmopolitanisms (1999: 34). As can be seen from the examples in the pre-
ceding section, current scholarship on subaltern cosmopolitanism has been
greatly inspired by this eldwork approach both in form and spirit and shows
great attention to the minutiae of everyday experience of the non-elite.
In fact, subaltern cosmopolitanism pushes the idea of attending to the lives
of common people even further by bringing to focus the marginalized. This
is a carrying on of Bhabhas idea of vernacular cosmopolitanism, a kind of
cosmopolitan community envisaged in a marginality (1996: 42). Bhabha dis-
closes the entangled relationship between the colonial and imperial enterprise
and such concepts as liberalism and universalism, and highlighting the post-
colonial spaces preoccupied by various minority groups. Khaders (2003) study
of Caribbean literature, for example, is a timely answer to Bhabhas call.
Khader uses subaltern cosmopolitanism to describe the mode of reconnecting
to home in Caribbean postcolonial womens writings. Due to their peripheral
subject positions as women, colonials and second-class citizens, Puerto Rican
women writers feel at ease neither at their American metropolitan homes nor
at their Caribbean homes. But they strategically situate their marginalization
within the broader transnational context, extend concerns beyond their own
country to establish a form of transnational and transethnic bond with all
kinds of oppressed groups, and eventually achieve a sense of oppositionality,
empowerment and agency. In envisioning subaltern solidarity, Sonjia and
Wissel (2010) even suggest replacing Giorgio Agambens paradigmatic gure
of the refugee with the illegalized female migrant. As a nodal point of
important threads of global power relations (eg class, sex and ethnicity) and a
signicant driving force of transnationalization, illegalized female immigrants
illustrate the radical potential of a subaltern cosmopolitanism that is fueled by
the pragmatism of everyday life, the practices of frontier crossing and migrant
networks (2010: 44). Because of illegalized female immigrants precarious
nomadic existence, such a potential, indeed, is in no ways guaranteed, but their
mobility mode offers at least, according to Sonjia andWissel, an opportunity to
think and experiment outside the institutional apparatus of the border regime.
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Pursuing a little further along this line of thought, I would here suggest
reserving subaltern cosmopolitanism for a critical, oppositional and activist
vision and practice thriving on the periphery of current geopolitical distribu-
tion of epistemic power (Mignolo, 2000: 745). I understand subaltern, in Chos
(2007) words, not as an object of analysis but as a condition of subjectivity.
With their literary achievements, Puerto Rican women writers may be elites in
their Puerto Rican community, but their subjective positions as women, colo-
nials and second-class citizens have rendered their elite status rather tenuous.
In arguing for a critical, oppositional and activist stance of subaltern cosmo-
politanism, I am not interested in dividing individuals into clear-cut subaltern
and non-subaltern camps. Rather, I aim to bring info focus various conditions
of subaltern subjectivity where alternative cosmopolitan imaginations are
rooted and to locate specic centres of power to which these peripheral
imaginations relate.
Another widespread endeavour in current cosmopolitan studies is to chal-
lenge Western understandings of cosmopolitanism which are inseparable
from the historical practices of European modernity and colonial conquest
(Popke, 2007: 513). In the past two decades, the Eurocentric cosmopolitan
project has come under siege from all quarters. One of the most recent waves
of erce attack was red by four English scholars: Glick Schiller, Stacey,
Tihanov and Prakash, each of whom delivered a speech entitled Whose Cos-
mopolitanism in the 2009 launch festival of the Research Institute for Cos-
mopolitan Cultures at Manchester University and helped map out a research
agenda for cosmopolitanism in the decade to come. Glick Schiller (2009)
argues against the notion of world citizen due to its tendency to either homog-
enize or essentialize national and foreign cultures and to take for granted the
inequality of power positions. She suggests approaching cosmopolitanism as a
coming together without disregarding disparate, multiple pasts and presents
which is different from the contemporary invocation of European humanism,
either secular or Christian. Prakash (2009) posits that we should not only
learn to speak of cosmopolitanism in its plural but also be aware of both the
internal conicts within each cosmopolitanism and external collisions between
one another. Tihanov (2009) urges us to look beyond Kants idea of perpetual
peace, which has often been appropriated to gloss over cosmopolitanism with
a positive genealogy, and to reveal the negative genealogy of cosmopoli-
tanism in a body of ideas that rationalize the universality of human nature in
terms that are not necessarily optimistic and ameliorative. Stacey (2009)
cautions us that the claimed tolerance towards difference may enact precisely
the opposite because we often project our own ambivalence about cosmopoli-
tanism onto the undesirable others of non-cosmopolitan cultures. These
research themes have been taken up by scholars working on subaltern cosmo-
politanism in various ways. Turning to miscellaneous subaltern subject
positions and their various articulations of cosmopolitanism, subaltern cosmo-
politanism steps out of the connes of Eurocentrism and addresses cosmo-
politanism in its multiplicity. Taking a counter-hegemonic stance, it unveils the
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limitations of the predominantly Euro-American imagination of cosmopoli-
tanism and highlights its internal conicts. Focusing on the disempowered who
live a precarious life on the margins, subaltern cosmopolitanism also espouses
the fragility and instability layered within its own conception.
Just as there is no such thing as the cosmopolitanism such as the Eurocentric
hegemonic blueprint, there is no single unitary form of subaltern cosmopoli-
tanism; rather, subaltern cosmopolitanism always prospers in its plural. There
is no need for different cosmopolitanisms to pose as a homogeneous counter-
hegemonic Other to be a force. As Bhabha (1996) puts it, solidarity is based on
the recognition of difference as much as it is on similarity. Or in Santoss words,
what can be achieved through collaboration between different kinds of sub-
altern cosmopolitanisms is less the result of a common starting point than of
a common point of arrival (2002: 459). Scholars have explored the plurality
and diversity of subaltern cosmopolitanism by taking into account a wide
range of marginalized subjectivities and situating them in their specic social
and historical contexts. Such a practice is part of the collective effort in todays
cosmopolitan studies to pull cosmopolitanism out of the shadow of philosophi-
cal discussions and commit it to concrete realities. Tarrow (2005), for example,
uses relational to describe cosmopolitanism identities as products of social
relations and involvement in political activities. Similarly, Kurasawa (2004)
champions a practice-oriented notion of cosmopolitanism from below.
Inspired by Nancy Frasers idea of subaltern counterpublics, where subaltern
social groups invent and circulate counter-discourses, Kurasawa examines
how subaltern counterpublics function on a global scale through alternative
globalization movements and sees cosmopolitanism as a form of mutual com-
mitment created through cross-border struggles for equity and fairness for
marginalized groups and courses.
Strengthening subaltern cosmopolitanism
In the essay published in 2000, Harvey, as a geographer, enthusiastically pro-
poses integrating geographical knowledge into cosmopolitan projects. Advo-
cating a reciprocal relationship between geography and cosmopolitanism, he
states, Cosmopolitanism bereft of geographical specicity remains abstracted
and alienated reason, liable, when it comes to earth, to produce all manner of
unintended and sometimes explosively evil consequences. Geography unin-
spired by any cosmopolitan vision is either mere heterotopic description or a
passive tool for power for dominating the weak (2000: 557558). Nine years
later, Harvey (2009) expanded this idea into a book-length discussion. Revisit-
ing his argument, he contends that many contemporary cosmopolitan imagina-
tions shared the defect of relying on the abstracted notion of space and
ignoring cosmopolitanisms material groundings. It is this fatal aw, according
to Harvey, that makes many new cosmopolitan theories and practices easy
prey to neoliberal capitalism, which have gone all out to atten geographical
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particularities for hegemonic economic and political control. Though relentless
in his critique of aspatial cosmopolitanism, Harvey, with much of our expec-
tation, falls short when it comes to offering his own framework for interrogating
cosmopolitanism. Running throughthe whole bookis the questionof what kind
of geographical knowledge wouldbe appropriate for cosmopolitanprojects; yet
when we close the book, the question still hangs in the air. If we are to bring in
the spatial perspective tostrengthencosmopolitantheory, the ideas of relational
spatial politics advanced by two other geographers, Amin and Massey, will
prove very useful. In the earlier part of this essay I have outlined two lines of
exploration of subaltern cosmopolitanism: the question of living together of
different cultural, ethnic and racial groups in a particular area, and the question
of transnational connectivity and solidarity between the disenfranchised.
Amins andMasseys discussions of place andspace directly mapontothese two
lines of inquiry of subaltern cosmopolitanism.
In elaborating on her view of the politics of place, Massey (2005) coins the
word throwntogetherness to describe the situation of living together. This
is an appropriation of Heideggers idea that our being in the world is a
thrownness: we are all thrown from birth into one place or another in the
world and brought up in ways that not only contingently pregure our ideas
and beliefs but, in so doing, cut all of us off from any direct knowledge or easy
road to enlightenment. In the same fashion in which we come to the world,
Massey suggests, we come to live with each other in a particular place. Peoples
comings and goings make a place an ever-shifting constellation of trajectories
(Massey, 2005: 151). The uncertainty and contingency associated with multiple
social identities and unequal social relations give the place a highly political
character. As the place is inevitably a site of negotiation of intersecting tra-
jectories, the challenge we are faced with today is not how do I live in a place?
but how do we live together? Similarly, Amin proposes a politics of propin-
quity, by which he means a politics shaped by the issues thrown up by living
with diversity and sharing a common territorial space (2004: 39). In Amins
opinion, the local turf is an experienced and contested lived space, where
heterogeneity negotiated habitually through struggles over roads and noise,
public spaces, sitting decisions, neighborhoods and neighbors, housing devel-
opments, street life (Amin, 2004: 39). This politics of place differs from the
traditional politics of regional management in that it posits that normative
objectives in policy-making are products of active debate rather than pre-
imposed, that the decision-making process should be pluralized rather than
centralized, and that the sense of the local is culturally and economically
fragmented rather than coherent. Masseys and Amins ideas can inform the
discussion of how different subaltern groups live together in a particular area
in a number of important ways. To begin with, in studying subaltern cosmo-
politanism, scholars should pay attention to the historical contingency of
the co-existence of different subaltern groups and investigate the specic
material situations that underlie the unexpected throwntogetherness. While
appreciating the convivial cosmopolitan scene of a particular place occupied
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by different subaltern groups, scholars also need to examine the daily nego-
tiations that have gone into the making of this conviviality and the non-
negotiable violence that may tear apart the seemingly smooth fabric of
coexistence. Third, it is highly necessary to develop an acute sense of the
unequal power relations of different subaltern groups and their shared author-
ity and responsibility of a place. Finally, it will be just as worthwhile to inves-
tigate how the sense of identity of a subaltern group has been refashioned and
how new identities have emerged through countless negotiations in a multi-
ethnic, multi-racial and multi-cultural region.
Amins and Masseys ideas concerning spatiality are no less instructive to
the discussion of transnational connectivity and solidarity between the disen-
franchised in subaltern cosmopolitan studies. In addition to a politics of pro-
pinquity, Amin also proposes a politics of connectivity. He argues that the local
daily life is increasingly locked into transnational ows and networks and
there is virtually no place that can be conceived as a closed entity within
prescribed boundaries. To illustrate the varied spatialities of connectivity and
transitivity that cross a given region (2004: 41), Amin points to the growing
number of local responses to global poverty, ethnic intolerance and imperial-
ism. In these cases, local groups voice through global networks and make an
impact on cultural politics both at home and beyond, whichAmin regards as a
cosmopolitan ethos of solidarity and commitment to distant others (2004:
42). Massey advances Amins idea of a politics of connectivity by working to
disrupt the place-local/space-global counterposition and demonstrating their
mutually constitutive relationship. According to Massey, space, rather than
being an abstract concept, should be conceived as the sum of relations, con-
nections, embodiments and practices (2004: 8); and places, rather than being
victims of global forces, are also the moments through which the global is
constituted, invented, coordinated, produced (2004: 11). Such a relational
positioning of place and space leads Massey to discover the potential of the
local movement to meet along lines of constructed equivalences of other local
struggles. LikeAmin, Massey regards the local as the spatial node of multitude
of relational networks of varying geographical reach (2004: 44), but she fur-
thers this point by noting that different places, as varying kinds of nodes
(2004: 11), have different positions within entangled webs of power relations,
and that the relational construction differs from one place to another due to
vastly uneven resource distribution. The signicance of Amins and Masseys
ideas is multi-fold. On the most obvious level, they alleviate our uneasiness
about transnational solidarity between the disenfranchised existing merely on
a discursive level and demonstrate real prospects for establishing connectivity
between dispersed counter-hegemonic local struggles, for we know the local
and the global exist in a dialectical relationship and local politics can have a
wide reach beyond its own geographical domain. Furthermore, Amin and
Massey help us realize the crucial need to nd out how local struggles of the
subaltern actually get connected despite their unequal positions in translocal
networks and in what specic ways do they constitute one another. Finally,
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Masseys idea of the geographies of responsibility suggests that transnational
connectivity and solidarity between the subaltern can be actively pursued
rather than be passively waited for, and that the initiative falls upon local
subaltern groups to create favourable conditions for such possibilities.
I hope the above discussion will not be taken to suggest that only a spatial
point of view can help enlighten our understanding and use of the concept of
subaltern cosmopolitanism. To give an idea of how the incorporation of other
areas of pursuit can benet the research into subaltern cosmopolitan, I would
like to briey mention two recent scholarly works, one in the eld of feminist
studies and the other in diaspora studies. Grewal, in an essay published in 2008,
proposes to understand the emergence of feminism around the world not as
evidence of a global sisterhood but as practices of coalition, conict and
contact between subjects gendered differently but in a linked way (Grewal,
2008: 190). Opting for the word practice, Grewal refuses to project feminism as
a teleology of coherent progress, and argues that feminist movements and
feminist subjects are produced through relations of inequality and power in
specic material situations. Cho, in her review of the recent rise of diaspora as
a eld of study, expresses her fear about the denitional morass into which
thinking through diasporas in isolation may lead us (2007: 21). She advocates
examining how diasporas eg the black diaspora, the Chinese diaspora, the
Indian diaspora constitute one another and how diaspora as a term and
critical force has emerged in relation to other emergent elds and disciplines
(2007: 21). Like Amins and Masseys work on space and place, Grewals and
Chos works can expect to inform the exploration of subaltern cosmopolitan-
ism with their relational thinking on connection, alliance and coalition across
ethnicities, races and nations. With these two examples, I intend to show that
subaltern cosmopolitanism, rather than an isolated area of research, is an open
and evolving enterprise. I therefore strongly argue for strengthening negative
cosmopolitanism by looking beyond its own territory and drawing from
diverse areas of dialogues and debates in the humanities and social sciences.
Concluding comments
At the very opening of this Viewpoint, I list a cluster of newly emerged
concepts in cosmopolitan studies, which combine in a similar fashion appar-
ently contradictory opposites to highlight the dialectical relationship between
ethnically, racially and culturally specic loyalties and transethnic, transracial
and transcultural commitment to a universal human fullment. In my subse-
quent survey of recent scholarship on subaltern cosmopolitanism, I delineate
the two paths in which this notion has often been explored: by studying the
encounter of different subaltern individuals and groups in a place and by
examining the connection between different subaltern individuals and groups
across space beyond the immediate local level. I then demonstrate how
scholarly pursuits in areas other than cosmopolitanism can enrich our
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understanding of subaltern cosmopolitanism, specically in my discussion,
geographers conceptualization of place and space. Just as Amin and Masseys
relational spatial politics argues that there is no such dichotomy between place
and space, the two stands in the studies of subaltern cosmopolitanism are
intertwined rather than separated. In other words, subaltern cosmopolitanism
looks at the imbrication of the lives of the subaltern at once within the
heterogeneity of local settings and within translocal and transnational net-
works. I would nally note that though I argue for the uniqueness of the notion
of subaltern cosmopolitanism, I am well aware of its intersections with other
oxymoronic notions of cosmopolitanism. For example, the subaltern cosmo-
politanism forged between Hindus and Muslims in Indian slums that fasci-
nates Mayaram can be said to be an instance of ethnic cosmopolitanism, and
the subaltern cosmopolitanism Gidwani nds in the American domestic
worker Connie can be taken as an example of working-class cosmopolitanism.
As I earlier stated, subaltern cosmopolitanism does not stipulate the proper
object of analysis, but examines a wide range of cosmopolitanisms emerging
from various marginalized subject positions. It investigates the implications of
politically sensitive multiple cosmopolitanisms in our plural and uid society
and the possibilities of the resistant and transformative agency of the disen-
franchised in their diverse cosmopolitan imaginations and practices.
University of Alberta Received 25 May 2011
Finally accepted 9 May 2013
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on the initial draft of this
manuscript.
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