Foreword: Cosmopolitanisms and the cosmopolitical

Abstract

Before the scientific awareness of space as we know it, ‘cosmos’ was closest to what we would call the ‘globe’. Cosmos is neither ‘world’ nor the idea of many cultures coming together. To use ‘cosmopolitanism’ as a multidisciplinary project of forging identities that are not focused specifically on ethnic identities is excellent. We should, however, also attempt to look at the second part of the word ‘cosmopolitanism’, not as if it comes from the word ‘cosmopolis’ but as if it comes from cosmopolitheia. Politeia – Constitutions – is a book by Plato (1990). The title was mistranslated as Republic during the Renaissance, and no one corrected it. The res publica comes in only with the Romans. Plato’s book actually is called Constitutions – Politeia. It is well known that there is no particular favour shown there for what we call democracy. Most people today go back to Immanuel Kant (1963) when they wish to entertain new ideas of cosmopolitheia. Kant’s thinking of cosmopolitheia was connected to the rise of monopoly capitalist colonialism. As a result of the colonization brought about by the demands of the expansion of industrial capitalism, Kant’s generation of European intellectuals felt, as we do as a result of the network society attendant upon capitalist globalization, that they had access to a world. Goethe talks about Weltliteratur – world literature. Kant trumps Plato, who only knew the city-state, because his contemporary Europeans had the world. From politheia we advance to cosmopolitheia, from mere constitutionality to world governance. Kant’s idea of cosmopolitheia could really not go beyond the nation-state having its own colonial states. But we cannot rebut this through mere regionalism: by showing the Europeans that there were lived cosmopolitanisms in Asia and theorizing them. That gesture legitimizes Euro-teleology by reversal. As a result, people will patronize you and not take you seriously when you are not there. I was invited to Nepal in December 2011 because in South Asian studies, India is the 800-lb gorilla in the room. My hosts were not interested in Nepal studies; there is already important Nepal studies in existence. And they were not interested in South