Cosmopolitanism in the Age of Globalization: Citizens without States

The Postmodern Condition of Cosmopolitanism

Lee Trepanier The Postmodern Condition of Cosmopolitanism The advent of globalization has prompted both democratic and cosmopolitan theorists to reconceptualize democracy, citizenship, and political community , as “the ideals of citizenship clash with the sovereign nation-state in which they were first developed.”1 No longer able to meet the pressures of globalization, notions like democracy must be transformed in order to continue to be relevant in this globalized age. Challenged by cosmopolitan thinkers, democratic theorists have been forced to reconceive what constitutes democracy and citizenship as the national community loses importance . However, cosmopolitan theorists also have a set of their own problems with globalization. They have yet to explain how democracy, citizenship, or political community could be accomplished at the global level and why such a feat would be desirable. In other words, they neglect the possibility that globalization can pose a problem to democratic theory itself. With his philosophy of deconstruction, Derrida is such a theorist who addresses these concerns and provides us a path to navigate this debate between democratic and cosmopolitan theorists. For Derrida, democracy is a universal paradigm that transcends national community; and globalization has created a space for cosmopolitan values like hospitality to take the place of national ones. But Derrida also recognizes that any value, cosmopolitan or otherwise, inherently contains an aspect of violence and that globalization can actually make it easier for the worst rather than the least type of violence to occur. Globalization, with its implicit notions of cosmopolitan citizenship and values, therefore is neither a golden panacea nor an unsolvable problem for Derrida; rather, it presents new opportunities as well as dangers for us. 212 Lee Trepanier Critical to determining Derrida’s views on globalization and cosmopolitanism is first to understand his philosophy of deconstructionism as a call for a certain existential mode of existence rather than as another philosophy that attempts to explain reality. Deconstruction is an appeal to be existentially open to the possibilities of existence rather than privileging one value over another, thereby marginalizing and doing violence to other people, values, or institutions (“the other”).2 This mode of existence Derrida names différance and messianic. Its contrary state is what I have called foundational. In a globalized world, the path of the least violence is one of deconstruction, and the path of the worst violence is foundational. But before we explore these two divergent paths, an explanation of deconstructionism is required. After showing that deconstructionism is an existential mode of existence, I discuss some of deconstructionism’s cosmopolitan values that, in spite of their positive benefits, will always possess an aspect of violence. The three sections that follow that discussion speak of how these values are realized in the political and globalized context of democracy, violence, and law. The essay concludes with a discussion of Derrida’s place both in transcendental philosophy and in the debates between democratic and cosmopolitan theorists. As a Mode of Existence In his essay entitled “Et Cetera,” Derrida presents the principles that define deconstruction: Each time that I say “deconstruction and X (regardless of the concept or the theme),” this is the prelude to a very singular division that turns this X into, or rather makes appear in this X, an impossibility that becomes its proper and sole possibility, with the result that between the X as possible and the “same” X as impossible, there is nothing but a relation of homonymy, a relation for which we have to provide an account. . . . For example, here referring myself to demonstrations I have already attempted . . . gift, hospitality, death itself (and therefore so many other things) can be possible only as impossible, as the impossible , that is, unconditionally.3 In other words, deconstructionism is a refusal to categorically define anything once and for all. It is a mode of existence that is never satisfied with The Postmodern Condition of Cosmopolitanism 213 conclusive definitions, aims, or ends, for such a task for Derrida is not only impossible but dangerous, because it would marginalize people, ideas, institutions—the “other”—keeping them from being acknowledged. Deconstruction therefore rejects the foundational mode of existence that characterizes such philosophies as Platonic metaphysics, which assumes a transcendent reality that is transparent and structured in terms of oppositions, with one opposition more valued than another.4 The marginalized other can be recovered by deconstructionism by first reversing the metaphysical hierarchies of power and then favoring the undervalued. In genealogically tracing...