Jerome-Alexandre Nielsberg: Is cosmopolitics a new idea?

The notion of cosmopolitics has a long history in European political philosophy. The historian Enzo Traverso traces its development and underscores its contradictions. At the Paris FSE, especially in sessions dealing with world peace, the term "cosmopolitics" was used a lot. What’s it all about?

Enzo Traverso. Cosmopolitanism is a very old concept. Nevertheless, we can say that its first systematic formulation, at the politico-legal level, was due to Kant. This formulation is marked by the French Revolution, and forms part of a broader reflection about the possibility of universal peace. For Kant, the human beings of the future should, as citizens of a universal state –Humanity—be able to enjoy rights which extend beyond the regulatory framework of states and nations. These would be human rights, over and above what was then called the “law of nations”. The only problem was that Kant was unable to articulate in a satisfactory manner the relationship between international law and cosmopolitical law. He persisted in thinking in terms of federations of sovereign states, when a real cosmopolitical legal system must transcend national sovereignties. This contradiction has never been resolved. Today, the altermondialist (“other-world”) movement has re-opened the debate, addressing issues which can only have cosmopolitical solutions: the environment, health, North-South relations, access to natural resources, the division of wealth on a global scale, the social prerequisites for a democratic system, etc. All of these questions need to be addressed on a global scale: they concern human beings in their capacity as citizens of the world. Kant’s cosmopolotanism is founded on the liberal contractualist doctrine, whereas the altermondialist movement sees its roots in anti-capitalism.

Doesn’t the re-emergence of cosmopolitical thinking in this movement strike you as somewhat surprising?

Enzo Traverso. There are two sides to Kant’s treatment: on the one hand, there is an ethical dimension, on the other, a contractualist dimension, which is liberal in the wider sense of the term. But there is no necessary connection between the idea of global citizenship and the liberal conception of private property and individual rights. I would even say that this idea articulates more easily with a republican conception of civic virtue and a socialist conception of “equaliberty”. Thus it is not surprising that socialism and then communism became the heirs of the cosmoplitanism of the Enlightenment: all through the 19th century, only Marx conceived a universal community of humankind. At this time, liberalism went hand in hand with the construction of nation-states and identified itself with imperialism, renouncing the cosmopolitanist tradition. In fact, the only true liberal cosmopolitan, after Kant, was Hans Kelsen. But his legal normativism gives his idea of civitas maxima (supreme citizenship) an extremely abstract and artificial character. Liberal cosmopolitanism never went any further than proposing a “Westphalian” system of world governance, i.e. a hierarchical, centralized world order. This is the model behind the Congress of Vienna in the 19th century, the League of nations between the wars, and then the UN. And this model of world governance has found itself in crisis since the end of the Cold War, with the rise of American plans for imperial hegemony in place of multilateralism. Of course, nobody has yet worked out a complete and workable cosmopolitical theory. But the altermondialist movement, by regarding the planet as common property and humanity as the supreme universal value, incompatible with market-driven social relationships and the military order of states, founds the utopia of a humanity without borders and constitutes a basis for conceiving an alternative cosmopolitical order. So I am not surprised that it is taking up Kant’s idea.

Interview by Jérôme-Alexandre Nielsberg.

People or multitudes?

Antonio Negri replaces previous political terms used to describe the masses with the concept of “multitudes”. This is an ambiguous notion. Jean-Luc Nancy prefers the notion, perhaps in need of reworking, of people. Recently, during a conference, you opposed the concept of “people” to that of “multitudes”. Can you explain this opposition? Jean-Luc Nancy. It seems to me that altermondialists use the notion of “multitudes” to express their reservations about an idea of “people” based on a closed identity. However, I can see three problems in this usage. Firstly, the altermondialist movement supports the claims of a certain number of minorities which identify themselves as so many communities, if not peoples, whereas the notion of multitudes breaks everything down into individual units. Next, one might wonder whether this dispersion into multitudes is not a direct effect of the extension of this same rampant globalization of capitalism to which the altermondialist movement is opposed. Finally, I discern a major ambiguity in this word: it multiplies individuals, or small groups, but not in the sense of increase, of a force for example, and suggests a sort of divagation. It is for these reasons that I wonder whether there is not some life left in the concept of the people, after all. The people, in both senses of the word: an identity, constructed by opposition to the powerful, and, as Raffarin says, the France below, the populace, everything which tends to be excluded, oppressed, exploited. There’s nothing in “multitudes” to suggest that. Although I am well aware that the word “people” seems to have been confiscated by populism, I don’t see why we should let ourselves be fazed by this confiscation. Why not reclaim the word “people”, not in the sense of an identity, but in the more concrete sense of the common people. The common people who are demanding their rights. And besides, with the common people, the populace, etc., we are not far from another, completely forgotten word: proletariat. A word which for a long time was the mark of the revolt, of the protest of the most deprived against those who deprived them. To me, all that seems important. The people is that which tries to articulate itself, which articulates itself, proclaims itself, institutes itself without institutionalizing itself. Against populism, we may argue that the adjective qualifying the word “people”, for example in “the French people”, is a meaningless mark in every case. It is never founded on some essence defined a priori, but allows a certain joint statement to be made, allows the word “we” to be used. Besides, the concept of democracy—government by the people—subsumes a process of identification which is not, which cannot be, identification with an essence. I would like to put the following question to Toni Negri: Can multitudes say “we”? And, if so, which “we” are we talking about.

As told to Jérôme-Alexandre Nielsberg.

"Developed by Toni Negri, the concept of multitude defines a collection of single individuals which goes beyond both the concept of people and that of working class. The multitude is not a subject, but an immanent collection of practices, of forms of production, of relationships, which is not subsumed by any higher unit. In a word: an uninterrupted creative capacity. This capacity is quantitatively and qualitatively superior to that of the mechanisms of power which try to control and exploit it. A concept cutting across modern eco-political identities, the multitude is perfectly matched to the phenomenon of globalization. On its negative side, globalization is the commercial and technological unification of the world. On the positive side, it is the linking together of a plurality of worlds within one world open to its own abyss, to its lack of any transcendent value. This battle of the world with itself is the battle of the multitude, or rather of the multitudes, definitely plural, which are united by nothing but which everything brings together. Politically, this coming together may mean this: 1: A calling in question of the status of citizen, in favour of that of resident, recognizing a universal right of abode. 2: A yearning for direct democracy founded on the multitudes’ capacity for self-organization. 3: A trans-national vision of politics. 4: A concern for the environment: multitudes that have become aware of their power know that unlimited productivity is dangerous. They know that there is often more power in restraint than in a free-for-all."

(Frédéric Neyrat, program director at the Collège international de philosophie (International College of Philosophy) and board member of the review Multitudes.)

Empire

"It is the political form of the global market, i.e. the totality of arms and means of coercion which defend it, of instruments of monetary, financial and commercial regulation, and finally, within a “biopolitical” global society, the totality of instruments of circulation, of communication and of forms of language. Every capitalist society needs to be commanded: the Empire is the command exercised on the globalized capitalist society. Its prerequisites are, on one hand, the extinction of the nation-state (as it has been understood for centuries and as some obstinately continue to see it), and on the other hand, the end of “old-style” forms of imperialism, which were nothing other than extensions of the nation-state. " (Antonio Negri, Exils, Éditions des Mille et une nuits, 1997.)

Biopolitics

“That means literally the intersection of power with life. It is no novelty that power has chosen to express itself in life itself, to make it its preferred writing surface. It’s what Foucault calls “Biopower”, and he describes its birth, starting from the end of the 18th century. But there is also resistance to biopower. To say that life resists means that it affirms its power, that is, its capacity for creation, invention, production, subjectivation. This is what we call “biopolitics”: life’s resistance to power, inside that very power which has permeated life." (Antonio Negri, Du retour, Éditions Calmann-Lévy, 2002.)

Economy of Solidarity.

"In the broadest sense, the economy of solidarity can be defined as the totality of activities contributing to the democratization of the economy, beginning with the commitment of citizens. Despite what the monopolization of the word “solidarity” by promoters of certain charitable activities might lead us to believe, the social economy is not a symptom of deregulation, which would like to replace public-sector activity with charity, setting us back more than a century. It springs from collective actions trying to establish regulation at the international and local levels, enhancing national regulations or making up for their deficiencies. So the social economy ... can articulate these two dimensions of solidarity so as to increase society’s capacity to resist social atomization, which itself is being accentuated by the monetarization and mercantilization of daily life."

(Philippe Chanial et Jean-Louis Laville, "l'Économie solidaire: une question politique", in Mouvements, nø 19, Éditions de La Découverte, 2002.)

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