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.