From “Trans-” and “Post-nationalism” to “Critical Cosmopolitanism”. Notes on the Controversy Over Nationalism in the Western Academy

Abstract

This article provides an overview of theoretical efforts to overcome nation-centrism that have been undertaken in various fields of social science, including political science, cultural studies, social anthropology and macrosociology, migration studies, and social philosophy, from the 1990s. The opposition to nationalism, characteristic of the academic literature of that time, was conducted mainly on the epistemological plane; i.e., within the framework of polemics engaging “methodological nationalism”. The researchers who defended the positions of “transnationalism” and/or “post-nationalism” dissociated themselves from nation-centric perspectives to the extent that they hindered the productive analysis of transformations of social reality. However, there was an ideological and normative component to this dissociation. Nationalism was unacceptable for many scientists both as a methodology and also as a worldview. Since cosmopolitanism was the main opponent of the nationalist worldview, critics of nationalism were obliged to turn to its associated concepts. The problematic nature of such an appeal, however, lies in the fact that the cosmopolitan tradition of Western academic literature developed mainly within a liberal ideological fold. This led toward efforts to reset cosmopolitanism as an articulation of the left-leaning agenda. This present article focuses on “critical cosmopolitanism”. If the nationalist view sees the condition for the possibility of solidarity in the very fact of community, then the critical-cosmopolitan view is that solidarity can arise from a general disagreement with oppression (in whatever forms the latter may manifest itself). Community, therefore, does not precede solidarity, but is the result of the process of its formation. The author of the article analyses and revises the terms necessary to discuss the formation of solidarity and the fight against oppression, and offers an attempt to comprehend the possibility of a post-national world.