Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism
I wrote a seminar paper at the European University Institute for the seminar "Nationalism in Theory and Practice" with Profs. Rainer Bauböck and Michael Keating. Since it received an excellent review I publish it here. You can find it on my academia.edu webpage: http://eui.academia.edu/FrankEjbyPoulsen/Papers/138682/Cosmopolitanism-and-Nationalism.
Apply to the European University Institute Doctoral Programme
Every year, 160 research grants are awarded by the EU Member States and other European national authorities to successful candidates. The deadline is 30 January 2010. More information here: http://www.eui.eu/ProgrammesandFellowships/DoctoralProgramme/Index.aspx Why Choose the EUI The European University Institute (EUI) in Florence offers one of the world's largest and most distinguished graduate and postgraduate programmes in the social sciences. Its Departments... Continue Reading →
Que s’est-il passé en 1989 en Europe de l’Est ?
Comme le temps court ! Tenez, ce banc ! Il a l’air immobile… eh bien, pas du tout, il charge ! Il court à bride abattue ! Il fonce… vers où… vers quoi ?… Quel but ? Quel sens ? Witold Gombrowicz, Opérette. Que s’est-il passé en 1989 en Europe de l’Est ? « Rien ». Le mot figurait dans le carnet de notes de... Continue Reading →
Pollock, Sheldon, Bhabha, Breckenridge — Cosmopolitanisms
Work Cited Pollock, Sheldon, Homi K. Bhabha, Carol A. Breckenridge, and Dipesh Chakrabarty. “Cosmopolitanisms.” In Cosmopolitanism, edited by Carol A. Breckenridge, Sheldon Pollock, Homi K. Bhabha and Dipesh Chakrabarty, 1-14. Durham, NC & London: A Millennial Quartet Book, 2002. Cosmopolitanism as an object of study: practice and theory related in a necessarily open concept Cosmopolitanism... Continue Reading →
The identical cameleon
Now that I have started to acquire some degree of mastership in several languages, I am beginning to wonder about the side-effects of being a polyglot. Googling the term "polyglot" I came to the wikipedia page dedicated to multilingualism. According to some studies, there is a difference being made between "compound bilinguals" and "coordinate bilinguals".... Continue Reading →
Cosmopolitanism and all that jazz
Peter Wessel wrote an excellent essay on jazz, a tad historical and analytical, of the mingling, or lack thereof, and intermingling of cultures and traditions. If music is already considered to be the most universal mode of communication, then jazz would be its lingua franca. Unfortunately, it has become an idiom, a fixed form, in... Continue Reading →
ius gentium droit naturel chez Rabelais, et progression sur les Lumières
Petite note de lecture en passant. Rabelais évoque à propos des couleurs de Gargantua, la distinction entre jus gentium et droit naturel (jus naturae) dans Gargantua aux éditions de la Pléiade (pp. 30-31): Et n'est cette signifiance par imposition humaine institué, mais receue par consentement de tout le monde, que les philosophes nomment ius gentium,... Continue Reading →
Mikkel Thorup – Cosmopolitics!
Great article in Eurozine published in 2006 by Mikkel Thorup, lecturer at the University of Århus in Denmark, on political cosmopolitanism. It explains well where contemporary cosmopolitanism stands, in between universalism, pluralism, and nationalism: "New cosmopolitanism is therefore critical of what we can call the universalist Left and the nationalist Right." Still, the article, as... Continue Reading →
From the nation-state to the cosmopolitan-state: politics and culture for the 21st century
Thank you Peter for commenting on "Polyfonias" and delving into literary analyses. I would like to add to your comment on monolingualism. It seems that today we have forgotten our past when it comes to language. Our past was Babelian (but not in the sense that the myth should serve the construction of a universal... Continue Reading →
Research Proposal
research-proposal2 Here is the research proposal I have elaborated for a 3 years PhD research. All comments and feedback are more than welcomed to refine the project.
Peter Wessel – Polyfonías
I went to a concert/poetry reading at the Danish house in Paris, the institution in charge of promoting Danish (not only but mainly) culture in France. Peter Wessel, a Danish born poet who lived in France, Spain, California, and who knows where else, was performing with Mark Solborg, a Danish/Argentinian composer, guitarist and musician, and... Continue Reading →
Ottmar Ette (University of Potsdam) The Scientist as Weltbürger: Alexander von Humboldt and the Beginning of Cosmopolitics
Excellent article on Humboldt and cosmopolitanism, arguing that the 'Weltbürger' was a scientist and the scientist a 'Weltbürger.' This reminds me of my own research on the use of the term cosmopolitan and citizen of the world in eighteenth century France. Very often people would use it as a moniker to claim a position of... Continue Reading →
History of Cosmopolitanism in Western Political Thought
My master's thesis "Element of an Archaeology of Cosmopolitanism in Western Political Thought: A Return to the French Enlightenment" is now available for download on the Danish website of the Department of Political Science, Centre for European Politics, University of Copenhagen. Using Foucault's archaeology and problematisation, coupled with the Cambridge school's contextualism, I investigate the... Continue Reading →
Beck, Ulrich — The Cosmopolitan Vision
Work Cited Beck, Ulrich. The Cosmopolitan Vision. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006. Summary of the Introduction The introduction opens with the opposition cosmopolitanism/patriotism. Today this old debate is over because the human condition has become cosmopolitan (2) Cosmopolitanism is no more a controversial rational idea. The “cosmopolitan outlook”: “Global sense, a sense of boundarylessness. An everyday,... Continue Reading →
Held, David — Culture and Political Community: National, Global and Cosmopolitan
Work Cited Held, David. “Culture and Political Community: National, Global, and Cosmopolitan.” In Conceiving Cosmopolitanism: Theory, Context, Practice, edited by Steven Vertovec and Robin Cohen, 48-58. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. 1. Historical backdrop The globalisation of culture has a long history. The expansion of great religions, pre-modern empires, etc. “For most human history, these... Continue Reading →
Copp, David — International Justice and the Basic Needs Principle
Work Cited Copp, David. “International justice and the basic needs principle.” In The Political Philosophy of Cosmopolitanism, edited by Gillian Brock and Harry Brighouse, 39-54. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. “Justice requires a state in favourable circumstances to enable its members to meet their basic needs throughout a normal lifespan”: the “basic needs principle” (39).... Continue Reading →
Tagore — The Home and the World
The book is like a diamond sparkling many facettes. I retain the opposition between patriotism and cosmopolitanism - an opposition also noticed by Martha Nussbaum in her article "Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism" published in the Boston Review, 1994. "I am willing," he said, "to serve my country; but my worship I reserve for Right which is... Continue Reading →
Benhabib, Seyla — The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era
Benhabib, Seyla (2002), The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Global integration is progressing parallel to social disintegration (separatisms, international terrorism, national revival). “Yet wether [sic] we call the current movements “struggles for recognition” (Charles Taylor, Nancy Fraser, and Axel Honneth), “identity/difference movements,” [sic] (Iris Young,... Continue Reading →
Rosenfeld, Sofia — Citizens of Nowhere in Particular: Cosmopolitanism, Writing and Political Engagement in Eighteenth-Century Europe
Work Cited Rosenfeld, Sophia. “Citizens of Noweher in Particular: Cosmopolitanism, Writing and Political Engagement in Eighteenth-Century Europe.” National Identities 4, no. 1 (2002): 25-43. Contention of the essay: the development of the conceptual space of political engagement among private subjects cannot be reduced to the creation of national loyalties. A body of literature existed, produced... Continue Reading →
Mortier — Le rêve universaliste de l’orateur du genre humain
Mortier, R. (2000). Le rêve universaliste de l'"Orateur du Genre humain". In R. Mortier, Les Combats des Lumières (pp. 385-394). Paris: Aux amateurs de livres international. The Universalist idea was not something new or invented in the eighteenth century. However, the transformation of the feeling of being human into concrete political and social systems is... Continue Reading →
Fink, Gonthier Louis — “Cosmopolitisme” in Dictionnaire européen des lumières
Work Cited Fink, Gonthier Louis (1997) “Cosmopolitisme.” In Dictionnaire européen des lumières, edited by Michel Delon, 277-279. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. « Le XVIIIe siècle est le siècle du cosmopolitisme » (L. Réau). (277) « En 1690, le Dictionnaire universel de Furetière, qui ne connaît pas encore le terme « cosmopolite », le définit indirectement à l’article... Continue Reading →
O’Brien, Karen — Narratives of Enlightenment
Introduction: cosmopolitanism, narrative, history Cosmopolitan history: “‘Cosmopolitanism’ is no longer a term much favoured by intellectual historians: as an idea, it seems to lack intellectual content; as a category of political thought, it has no referent. [footnote: “the last investigation of this idea was Thomas J. Schlereth]. The term is occasionally invoked by literary and... Continue Reading →
Hazard, Pierre – Cosmopolite
Historiographie du mot “cosmopolite.” Hazard, Pierre (1930) "Cosmopolite." In Mélanges d'histoire littéraire générale et comparée offerts à Fernand Baldensperger, 354-364. Paris: Libraire ancienne Honoré Champion. Résumé: Apparition au XVIe siècle : 1560 Guillaume Postel De la République des Turcs et, là où l’occasion s’offrera, des mœurs et des lois de tous muhamedistes, par Guillaume Postel, cosmopolite.... Continue Reading →
Avenel’s biography of Anacharsis Cloots
Avenel, Georges (1865), Anacharsis Cloots: L’orateur du genre humain, Paris : Librairie internationale. This is one of the very first biography existing on this not so well-known history character of the French Revolution, Anacharsis Cloots. The merit of this book is its weakness: the tone in which it is written. The author is writing in a... Continue Reading →
Bélissa, Marc: Les patriotes européens et l’ordre républicain cosmopolitique 1795-1802
Bélissa analyses the conquests made by the new French Republic in Italy (an IV-V), Switzerland (an VI-VII), Holland (an III), and Belgium (an III-IV). These countries are called “sister-Republics.” Patriots in these “sister-Republics” are European militants and support the French Republic, at first, in its fight against monarchical Europe (91). These patriots have conscious to... Continue Reading →
Dédéyan: le cosmopolitisme européen sous la révolution et l’empire
Dédéyan, Charles (1976) Le cosmopolitisme européen sous la Révolution et l’Empire. 2 vols. Paris: Société d’édition d’enseignement supérieur. One of the rare books of intellectual history about cosmopolitanism in Europe. Written in French, it is focusing on the periods immediately after the Enlightenment: the French Revolution and the first Empire under Napoléon Bonaparte. It is... Continue Reading →
On Nussbaum, cosmopolitanism and patriotism (and nationalism)
Martha C. Nussbaum, professor at University of Chicago Law School, published in 1994 an article praising a "cosmopolitan stoic education" over a "national education" that started debates in the English speaking world about cosmopolitanism. The article is a reaction against Richard Rorty and Sheldon Hackney, and is therefore answering an internal Northern American debate. Published... Continue Reading →
Obama’s Foreign Policy: A Cosmopolitan Policy in the Interests of the U.S.A.
Candidate Obama signed an article in the well-known scholarly journal of international relations Foreign Affairs, July/August 2007, entitled “Common Security for our Common Humanity.” There are a few reasons why Obama can be called a cosmopolitan politician as well as his policy agenda a program for cosmopolitics. One thing that is immediately striking is that... Continue Reading →
Obama and McCain: Barack the cosmopolitan and John the local
Many things oppose Obama and McCain. Of course, on the paper--on which their programme is printed that is--not much is separating them. On many issues they agree and especially in foreign policy one would be a fool to believe that Obama would be more multilateralist than McCain. The "America interest" will always prime. However, the... Continue Reading →
Schlereth: The Cosmopolitan Ideal in Enlightenment Thought
Schlereth, Thomas (1977) The Cosmopolitan Ideal in Enlightenment Thought: Its Form and Function in the Ideas of Franklin, Hume, and Voltaire, 1694-1790. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Thomas J. Schlereth studied how the cosmopolitan ideal had a “noticeable impact on Enlightenment intellectual life throughout the trans-Atlantic community”.[1] But Schlereth does not advance that... Continue Reading →
French cuisine and national identity
I read in this week's French equivalent to Time magazine Le Point an interview of gourmet critique Christian Millau, creator of the famous restaurant guide of the best restaurants, that 'French cuisine does not exist.' Actually, it is a point of view I came up with long ago after a few thoughts based on my... Continue Reading →
Back in France: diversity and integration
I am back in France and have been staying for a month now. I left about 7-8 years ago and only came back a few days twice a year for season holidays to visit my parents. My contact with French politics was limited to following the news sporadically in the dailies, and I only kept... Continue Reading →
Obama the first cosmopolitan politician
Will Obama be the first cosmopolitan elected official? Everything points to an affirmative answer -- on both counts. Surely, he is the first ever to be so multicultural with a Kenyan father, a US citizen mother, born in Hawaii, raised in Jakarta. He is also the first to make campaign abroad, the first who understands... Continue Reading →
Rousseau et le paradoxe d’une pensée cosmopolitique anti-cosmopolite
Dans la pensée de Rousseau, il y a un paradoxe sur lequel on se penche de plus en plus. Une certaine acrimonie face aux cosmopolites, alors que Rousseau exprime une pensée cosmopolitique en reprenant le grand projet de Saint-Pierre d'une paix universelle et perpétuelle. Projet raillé par un truculent Voltaire il est vrai, dans son... Continue Reading →
Cosmopolite, cosmopolitain, cosmopolitisme: définitions et problèmes
Que faut-il comprendre aujourd'hui des mots cosmopolite, cosmopolitisme ? D'abord si l'on reprend 'histoire de l'apparition de ces mots, il faut bien se rendre à l'évidence que notre conception actuelle est liée au paradigme dominant du nationalisme qui nous pousse à y voir une opposition entre cosmopolitisme et nationalisme. J'avance la thèse, en fait, que... Continue Reading →
Scandinavian literary weekend
This weekend was under the sign of cosmopolitan literature. First of all, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio received the Nobel Prize in literature: 'author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization.' This was the occasion for me to deepen my acquaintance with Le Clézio's works.... Continue Reading →
Thesis graded
My thesis has been graded and I received the best grade possible in the Danish system: 12. That makes it an A in the ECTS system. Plus an excellent assessment of my work by my supervisor and my 'censor'. I am very happy and very proud. Still, it does not give me a relevant job... Continue Reading →
Looking for a job in London
I am currently unable to find some time to post more on cosmopolitanism. I am dividing my time between my current part-time job, and my job search as I am moving to London on 1 October. I am also looking for an accommodation. As soon as my situation is stabilised, I shall be able to... Continue Reading →
The state of the Iranian state
My Armenian Iranian friends tell me a lot about the state of the Iranian state -- or the lack thereof. I was surprised to hear that there are no taxes in Iran, neither direct or indirect. Sounds like paradise for neo-liberals -- besides the absence of liberal rights. And in return for the 0% tax... Continue Reading →
Master’s thesis submited
Today I submitted my master's thesis; three copies by snail mail -- I had to choose airmail for the shortest possible delay. I guess that makes it the less environmental-friendly thesis of all. Now I am crossing my fingers for the best mark, so that I can proudly send it as a writing sample to... Continue Reading →
Link to RSF’s advice for foreign journalists covering human rights situation during Beijing Games
So it seems that the next Olympic games will be a tremendous communication-information-sign-warfare. In this communication battle that history showed totalitarian regimes always win -- although they do not win the war -- democratic countries are most probably going to lose. Simple: most of the Western wishful-thinking amateur human rights organisations are more interested in... Continue Reading →
Ulrich Beck: A New Cosmopolitanism is in the Air
Here is a link to an article by German sociologist Ulrich Beck published in November 2007, which is a translation of the original into English: http://www.signandsight.com/features/1603.html It is quite summing up the arguments developed in his three last books on cosmopolitanism -- Power in the Global Age: A New Political Economy (2002/2006); Cosmopolitan Vision (2004/2006);... Continue Reading →
Todorov: La conquête de l’Amérique, La question de l’autre
Todorov, Tzvetan. La conquête de l'Amérique : la question de l'autre. Paris: Seuil, 1982. In this book, Tzvetan Todorov, renowned Franco-Bulgarian writer and director of research at the Centre National de Recherches (CNRS) in Paris, investigates the Spanish conquest of Central America (the Caribbean and Mexico) during the sixteenth century. His research topic is the... Continue Reading →
Armenian Iranian refugees in Vienna
In Vienna I have been living in a student hall of residence for two years. Not all rooms are rented to students. Some are also rented to Iranian refugees of Armenian decent -- the most important Christian minority in Iran. The manager of the house is Armenian himself. But apparently there is no philanthropy there,... Continue Reading →
Idea for a wiki project site on cosmopolitanism
I am fairly new to the blogosphere, and I found a cool blog for academics, especially in the humanities, advising on the latest NICTs for educational purpose--academhack, which is listed in my blog links on the right navigation bar. There's a post about some interesting research tools. Among them, a link to "the state of... Continue Reading →
Obama in Berlin: ich bin ein Weltbürger?
Senator Barck Obama was Thursday 24 July 2008 in Berlin where he delivered his much anticipated speech in front of a massive crowd. Of course the reference to "ich bin ein Berliner" was obvious and too easy to mention. He opened his speech toning down expectations, stating he was there as a simple US citizen, and a "citizen of the world." Rhetorically he is leaving it up to the media coverage to make the link: "ich bin ein Weltbürger." To my knowledge, this must be one of the very first time a politician declares so openly a cosmopolitan ideal to be his. There is certainly much to celebrate for a cosmopolitan in this speech, but I would like to present a few remarks as to the alleged cosmopolitan nature of his commitment.
Foucault and the academe
Personally I do not understand at all where most of the people who write about Foucault or use Foucault in their studies (particularly in the fields of sociology and philosophy) get their interpretation of Foucault from. When I started to get interested in Foucault I had an odd reflex of getting my hand on secondary... Continue Reading →
Frank Ejby Poulsen 