As a worldview or way of being, cosmopolitanism has long been open to the charge of being unanchored with respect to a commitment to a specific national or regional reality. The conception of insurgent cosmopolitanism explored in the course of this platform, however, locates itself in opposition to the idea of a universal, normatively dictated “global culture,” to which the cosmopolitan is a subscriber. On the contrary, we would locate the cosmopolitan moment in the uncertainty, surprise, curiosity, and receptivity that attend the heuristic releasement of the self to the Other, on the basis of perceived affinities of predicament, yet in the awareness of radical differences. Such encounters among disparate subjectivities produce a multi-local sense of belonging, and allow citizens of postcolonial societies, especially, to transit from a territorially bounded sense of national space to a post-national cultural latitude. They also permit us to dissolve the dogma of “rootedness” through the mode of critical yet empathetic regard towards our location in a society or nation-state.
Rasha Salti engages in conversation with
Ranjit Hoskote on these subjects.