Did Someone Say Cosmopolitanism? a Critical Feminist View on Cosmopolitan Citizenship, Post-Nationalism and Trans-Nationalism in Europe

By Dr Ulrike M. Vieten (University of Sheffield, UK)

Since the early 1990s cosmopolitan visions evolved as an endeavour to transgress 20^thcentury’s understanding of national communities; the post2001 intellectual climate of some kind of hegemonic ‘security and surveillance totalitarianisms’ demands a serious ‘reality check’.

Speaking from Europe, and witnessing a rise in nationalistic socio-economic interests and neo-fascist political orientations in various EU Member States it is difficult to uphold any ideal of post-national political communities, not even talking of cosmopolitanism.

Nonetheless, I will argue from a feminist perspective that transnational belonging and cultural hybridity are equally on the rise providing some futuristic space to envision social justice and equality encompassing a subaltern cosmopolitanismin the plural. It seems we also live in a very rebellious civic world society; also very much connected to structural changes of the social fabric as far as ethnicities, race and religion is concerned in metropolitan cities all over the world.

While critically analysing Habermas’ and Soysal’s take of the ‘post-national’ and turning to Young’s concept of the ‘social connection model’, the  first part of the paper proposes an alternative reading of transnational and diasporic urban political spaces. It is argued that complex diversity and social contradictions nurture intensification and widening of trans-cultural cosmopolitan habits alongside a backlash of parochial opinions.

In a second part of the paper these emerging trans-national identity containers of multi-layered belonging will be tested while introducing some research results of a comparative study on new European citizenship and vernacular cosmopolitanim with respect to different ethno-national minorities in Britain, Germany and the Netherlands.