Citizens and Strangers: Cosmopolitanism as an Empty Universal. Issue 1 (February 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Rundell, John
• Is Part Of: Critical horizons. Volume 17:Issue 1(2016)
• Page Start: 110
• Page End: 122
• Publication Date: 2016-02
• Subjects: cosmopolitanism -- strangers -- outsiders -- democracy -- citizenship -- hospitality -- Kant -- Heller -- Habermas -- Derrida; Critical theory -- Periodicals; 142.05
• DOI: 10.1080/14409917.2016.1117819
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1440-9917

Abstract

Abstract : This paper approaches the issue of cosmopolitanism from the vantage point of hospitality. The notion of hospitality throws into relief some issues that are at the heart of political cosmopolitanism, but cannot be addressed by it. This is because these issues do not necessarily revolve around the category of the citizen (however extended), but around the categories of stranger and outsider. The paper critiques the tendency to conflate the categories of the stranger and the outsider and goes on to argue that the standard cosmopolitan extension of democracy to international contexts risks reproducing the exclusion of "outsiders" by nation-states, even democratic ones.