The Cause of Cosmopolitanism

Rating

Today, cosmopolitanism can be identified with ideas, practices and representations that are among our most important resources as we grapple with the pressures of a globalized world. The book, in assessing cosmopolitanism as a cause, argues that justifications and critiques of the cosmopolitan are shaped as much by political and cultural forces as by the distinctive philosophical tradition in which they are situated. The volume brings together a series of case studies, both historical accounts of the vicissitudes and the legacies of the cosmopolitan outlook, and critical analyses of a range of spheres - political and social theory, film, literature - where cosmopolitanism can be both an asset and something of a problem. Cosmopolitanism calls for an exploration, both critical and theoretical, of the ways in which it constitutes a specific set of dispositions as well as an engagement with the objections and qualifications through which it has been reshaped as a concept. The collection also places a decisive emphasis on the symbolic dimension of intimations of the cosmopolitan in modern and contemporary literature and film, so documenting transformations to which it continues to be subject.

Contents: Patrick O'Donovan/Laura Rascaroli: Introduction: Cosmopolitanism between Spaces and Practices - Nick Stevenson: European Cosmopolitan Solidarity: Questions of Citizenship, Difference and Post-Materialism - Rebecca E. Kingston: Kant and the Foundations of Modern Cosmopolitan Theory - Brian Duffy: Cosmopolitanism and Patriotism in Richard Ford's `Occidentals' - Ulrike M. Vieten: Situating Contemporary Discourses on Cosmopolitanism in Britain and Germany: Who is the Other, Anyway? - Patrick O'Donovan: The Logic of Alterity: Is it a Logical Alternative? - Lee Komito: The Experience of Virtual Communities: Cosmopolitan or Voyeur? - Andrew Cusack: The Wanderer as Weltburger: Die Harzreise and the Genesis of Heine's Cosmopolitanism - Richard Hibbitt: Paul Bourget's Critique of fin-de-siecle Cosmopolitanism - Irina Ruppo Malone: Ibsen, the Irish Revival and the Debate about Cosmopolitanism and Nationality in Irish Literature - Patrizia Piredda: Cosmopolitanism as Freedom in Alberto Savinio's Work - Barbara Geraghty: The Dangers of Cosmopolitanism: Okinawa, China and the US in Oshiro Tatsuhiro's The Cocktail Party - Niamh Doheny: Cosmopolitan Belonging and African-American Identity in the 1920s and 1930s: The Films of Oscar Micheaux - Wilfried Raussert: Between Ethical and Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism: Performance Art and Cultural Critique - Michael G. Kelly: Poetic Utterance and the Cosmopolitan Indisposition: On Gherasim Luca - Stefano Baschiera: Provincial Towns and European Metropolises: The Province in Italian New Wave Cinema - Ewa Mazierska: Citizens of the World versus Hapless Emigrants: The Lives and Films of Roman Polanski and Jerzy Skolimowski - Laura Rascaroli: Home and Away: Nanni Moretti's The Last Customer and the Ground Zero of Transnational Identities - Vera Sheridan: The Inadvertent Cosmopolitan: A Refugee Tale from Hungarian to English.

About the Author

Patrick O'Donovan is Professor of French at University College Cork. He was formerly a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. He has published widely on French literature and thought since 1789. He held a Government of Ireland Research Fellowship in 2002-3. Laura Rascaroli is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at University College Cork. She has published widely on modern and contemporary European cinema and film theory. She was a Government of Ireland Research Fellow in 2002-3.

Table of Contents

About the Author