Research Symposium: Postcolonial Cosmopolitanisms
Tuesday 24th May, 2011
2-5pm
S0.20, Social Sciences Building
How do we, with our manifest differences, live together in the world? What are the ways in which
cross-cultural difference have been imagined and managed across history and in different parts of
the world? What forms of social organization, political structures, and cultural systems have
facilitated or hindered coexistence? This symposium showcases the work of three up-and-coming
academics from Boston University who are all working in the broad fields of postcolonialism and
cosmopolitanism.
2.00-3.30pm
3.30-4.00pm
4.00-5.00pm
Laurence Breiner
Literary Constructions of the Cosmopolitan
English & African American Studies
Julian Go
Fanon’s Postcolonial Cosmopolitanism
Sociology
Ruha Benjamin
Provincializing Science: Racial Thought and
Sociology & African American Studies
Human Difference
Tea/ coffee/ cakes
Roundtable discussion
Daniel Orrells (Classics); Milija Gluhovic (Theatre); Lucy Mayblin (Sociology);
Gurminder K Bhambra (Sociology)
Abstracts
Literary Constructions of the Cosmopolitan
Laurence Breiner (English & African American Studies)
In literary studies generally, not much theoretical pressure is brought to bear on the term
“cosmopolitan” (the main exception is in some postcolonial approaches). This despite the fact that
literature is well-populated with characters whom most readers would regard as cosmopolitan.
What sorts of criteria underlie that regard? On what basis do some characters make the cut and
other not? In a spirit of inviting discussion rather than reaching hard conclusions, this paper
investigates some cosmopolitan figures to tease out issues for further consideration. Odysseus,
perhaps the first cosmopolitan, enables us to identify some hallmarks of the type (and in passing to
invoke some contrasting figures). The representation of this particular cosmopolitan lays the
groundwork for considering issues of gender, class or status, and self-presentation, especially
through language. After Odysseus, James Bond - a figure who not only allows us to carry those issues
further, but also draws attention to some seemingly quite different types who impinge on the
cosmopolitan in noteworthy ways: the flaneur, the picaro, the exile, the traveler (especially the
traveler who writes or tells tales) , and the expat. Both Ulysses and Bond are amenable to (post)colonial situations, and the paper concludes by turning to the particular case of the Caribbean,
where both of them are familiar figures, and where the cosmopolitan takes on some distinctive
forms, as some attention to Derek Walcott’s work makes apparent.
Fanon’s Postcolonial Cosmopolitanism
Julian Go (Sociology)
In the social sciences, cosmopolitanism has emerged as a powerful new paradigm for describing our
current phase of modernity. As a method that seeks a transcendence of methodological nationalism,
and as sociopolitical orientation espousing global citizenship, humanistic values and an openness to
difference, it has been traced back to the thinking of Kant and, according to some, reappears most
forcefully today amidst globalization. But cosmopolitan theory has rightly been criticized for its
Eurocentrism, its Western genealogy, its focus upon European experiences, and its Western
standpoint. Simply put, cosmopolitanism has not been cosmopolitan enough. This essay joins these
critiques and offers a preliminary reading of the work of Frantz Fanon to interrogate
cosmopolitanism’s Western self-understanding. Through Fanon we are able to see how current
cosmopolitanism is not just enabled by Western thinkers and globalization but also has a genealogy
that can be traced to colonialism and its contradictions. Matching Bhambra’s recent critique of
cosmopolitan theory, Fanon offers a postcolonial cosmopolitanism – a new humanism that is open
to universalism and difference but also remembers the violence attendant with those ideals.
Provincializing Science: Racial Thought and Human Difference
Ruha Benjamin (Sociology & African American Studies)
This talk examines human difference through the prism of the life sciences which have for so long
mutually constituted social taxonomies, cultural hegemony, state power, and empire building. In
seeming contrast, the recent mapping of the human genome prescribed an end to centuries old
chauvinisms by attesting that we are, in fact, one human race. Almost as soon as this was
announced, researchers began a quest to identify ethnoracial patterns in the small fraction of our
genome that differs. The quest to discover such patterns re-naturalizes old ethnoracial groupings but
it also ignites novel sovereignties that are pushing back against the imperial creep of Euro-American
research & development. Genomic sovereignty policies assert a protective ownership over the DNA
of entire populations in response to the pharmaceutical industry’s increasing focus on geneticallytailoring drugs to niche ethnic markets. In examining this new territorialization of human difference,
we are led to ask how postcolonialism and cosmopolitanism can help us make sense of these
competing forms of life—code that requires sequencing, property which needs protection, capital
that warrants investment, and constituencies who demand entitlements—all of which are produced
in these biopolitical experiments to different effect. We might also ask, what visions of (the good)
life are excluded or sterilized as perceived contaminants to the experiment? And whether
postcolonial or cosmopolitan sociologies can help us imagine and invent alternative forms of
knowledge production and benefit-sharing?