ABSTRACT
Cultural versions of cosmopolitanism are often seen as derivative of political ones: this is not surprising since the term originated, in ancient times as well as in modern and then again in contemporary revivals, as a regulatory idea for personal or collective political ethics. Ethical cosmopolitanism, which often informs normative political theories (Nash 2006), remains the defining variant. Even if there are a few dissenting voices (see in particular Papastergiadis in this volume), aesthetic versions – also associated with empirical or ‘really existing’, ‘ordinary’ or ‘banal’ dimensions – tend to be dismissed, as the chosen qualifiers reveal. The fate of the aesthetic dimension is revealing of a still dismissive stance, even after the ‘cultural turn’, towards cultural phenomena. This is particularly the case for certain cultural manifestations, whose contemporary development has prompted the introduction of expressions such as global culture and more recently global culture industry. An exploration of the relevance of cosmopolitanism in their widespread rise can thus be instrumental to a better understanding of how both cosmopolitanism and culture work today. Not only does this show the increasing overlap of cultural institutions and industry – and as would have more commonly been said until recently, high- and low-brow culture – but in so doing both continuities and ruptures between old and new issues and themes in cultural analysis are exposed. Taking up this lead, and with the intent of both charting the current tone of the debate and proposing a specific transversal reading of it, in what follows I first briefly outline and contextualise the distinction between ethical and aesthetic cosmopolitanism as an important facet of contemporary cultural theory. I will then assess its relevance for the interpretation of trends in contemporary global public culture, especially as expressed in key examples such as museums, exhibitions and major international festivals. Finally, in a brief concluding section I take up recent notions of aesthetic, or cultural, public sphere as a concept that can help integrating rather than dichotomising the political and cultural dimensions of cosmopolitanism.
