In this presentation, Galin Tihanov insists that cosmopolitanism is not a homogeneous concept but can instead be divided into two different types with an underlying distance between them: cultural and political cosmopolitanism. Cultural cosmopolitanism (which for the sake of convenience can be called Herderian cosmopolitanism) has at its core the appreciation of difference, and language is central to this understanding of the world as the site of interaction between distinctive cultures, which can be translated into one another but can never be entirely reduced to a denominator of commonality. The other type of cosmopolitanism, which Tihanov calls political cosmopolitanism (or, for the sake of convenience, Kantian cosmopolitanism) rests on a different assumption: it is usually language-neutral and sees the world as a place that is evolving towards some measure of homogeneity; while not neglecting difference, this version of cosmopolitanism believes that commonality, attained through various procedures of equivalence and reciprocity (think of Kant’s imperative of hospitality towards the foreigner by any state whose citizen s/he is not), ought to be the ultimate goal of history, the horizon that should direct all nations’ journeys toward it. Dissimilar as they are, these two types of cosmopolitanism both retain the notion of difference as their foundation: Kant’s cosmopolitan law (unlike international law) presupposes two different agents (an individual human being and a state) and, even more importantly, a radically different status for each of these two agents: the foreigner, unlike the native (the cultural aspect makes an unavoidable, if only implied, appearance here, much as Kant seems to be neglecting it), does not possess the rights that citizens do. But these two types of cosmopolitanism, while both grounded in the recognition of difference, handle this distinction differently: cultural cosmopolitanism embraces, cultivates, and proactively encourages difference; political cosmopolitanism rather works towards its negotiation and eventual accommodation under a regime of commonality.
Galin Tihanov is the George Steiner Professor of Comparative Literature at Queen Mary University of London. Tihanov is the author of The Birth and Death of Literary Theory: Regimes of Relevance in Russia and Beyond (Stanford University Press, 2019) which won the 2020 AATSEEL Prize for “best book in literary studies.” He has been elected to the British Academy (2021) and to Academia Europaea (2012). Tihanov serves on the executive board of the Institute for World Literature at Harvard University and as honorary scientific advisor to the Institute of Foreign Literatures at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, as well as on the advisory boards of universities and foundations in various countries, including the United States, China, and Germany. He is also a former president of the ICLA Committee on Literary Theory. Tihanov’s current work focuses on world literature, cosmopolitanism, and exile.
Clemena Antonova, IWM Research Director of the The World in Pieces Program, will moderate the discussion.
