Towards Corporeal Cosmopolitanism

Book excerpt: An articulation of any kind of global understanding of belonging, or ways of cosmopolitan life, requires a constant engagement with vulnerability, especially in a world that is so deeply wounded by subjugation, colonialisms and genocides. And yet discussion of the body, affect and corporeal politics from the margins are noticeably absent from contemporary liberal and Kantian models of cosmopolitan thought. This book explores the ways in which existing narratives of cosmopolitanism are often organised around European and American discourses of human rights and universalism, which allow little room for the articulation of an affective, embodied and subaltern politics. It brings contemporary understandings of cosmopolitan solidarities into dialogue with the body, affect and the persistent spectre of colonial difference. Race, ethnicity, sexuality and gender are all extremely important to these articulations of cosmopolitan belongings, and we cannot really speak of communities without speaking of embodiment and emotion. This text envisions new ways of articulating and conceptualising ‘corporeal cosmopolitanism’ which are neither restricted to a purely postcolonial paradigm, nor subjugated by European colonialism and modernity. It challenges the understanding of liberal cosmopolitan solidarities using decolonial, and feminist performances of solidarity as radical compassion, resistance, and love.