How can we come to care about the fate of others far away? This question haunts the modern revival of interest in cosmopolitanism, a keyword that has emerged at the turn of the millennium to articulate the nuances of lived experience in an increasingly global era.1 While definitions of cosmo-politanism differ, I use the word here to signal a mode of belonging that implies a heightened sense of responsibility for an expanded view of community. Under-stood in this way, cosmopolitanism has frequently been criticized for its inability to inspire the genuine affect that enables such ethical responsiveness. Its skeptics often argue that the ties of cosmopolitanism are inevitably arid and artificial, especially when compared to the emotionally enduring bonds of nationality or ethnicity (Himmelfarb 1996; McConnell 1996; Pinsky 1996). However, these portrayals of emotionless cosmopolitanism overlook the long and rich history of sentimental discourse that has sought to create robust feelings of community across social borders.2 This structure of feeling, I suggest, has been dismissed because it frequently figures the cosmopolitan subject as female. As a discourse Public Culture 21:2 doi 10.1215/08992363-2008-02
What does it mean to be at home in the world? This essay explores how modern cosmopolitanism might paradoxically emerge through an embrace of domesticity and kinship. I argue that cosmopolitanism should be less invested in a traditional idea of feeling “at home” in the world and more committed to recognizing “the world” through the home. As Amitav Ghosh's fiction illuminates the intimacy between the familial and the foreign, his work suggests that a robust cosmopolitan sensibility requires close attention to the energies of domestic life. As Ghosh's work teaches us to understand the home and the world as collaborative rather than competing realities, his concern for home enables a contemporary cosmopolitanism that critiques masculinist and imperialist visions of world citizenship.
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