Cosmopolitanizing and decosmopolitanizing globalization: Metaphorical re-description and transformations of political community

Abstract

Focusing on the seminal work of David Held, this essay attempts to denaturalize the assumed link between ‘cosmopolitan’ and ‘global’ in two ways. First, I demonstrate that cosmopolitanism is a particular metaphor of globalization and not an objective reflection of globalization's ‘inherent’ tendencies or potentials and so adds justificatory force to cosmopolitan groundings of global political community through certain interpretations about what the challenge of globalization is. Second, insofar as Held interprets globalization's challenge as a compromise of territoriality, the normative motivation behind his interpretation ironically replicates and reinforces territoriality. I try to demonstrate that the interpretation of globalization renders possible political projects, but also that these normative assumptions limit how a ‘global’ space is shaped and structured politically. The transformation of political community is therefore not simply the product of exogenous globalizing processes, but how such processes are understood to generate normative dilemmas and solutions. To highlight the shortcomings of this metaphor, I examine two alternative metaphors of globalized political community with Zygmunt Bauman's Tourists and Vagabonds and Naomi Klein's Fences and Windows. This metaphorical redescription of cosmopolitan global political community disrupts the assumed link between cosmopolitan and global, opening a critical space for creative dialogue about alternative horizons and possibilities for globalized political community beyond cosmopolitanism.