Cosmopolitanism and Modernism

This article lays out in a general way some of the main features of cosmopolitanism, and some of the discussions generated by its perceived promises and failure, and examines the way that ideas about and expectations for cosmopolitanism are transmitted through global modernist literary culture. It looks at pragmatic questions of genealogy: such as, what kind of cultural work is done by the idea of cosmopolitanism as it appears in the literature, art, and aesthetic theories of modernism? How do the questions posed in the cosmopolitanism debates of the past few centuries inflect, determine, or belie the putative worldliness of modernism? Such heuristic questions about forms of belonging guide the discussion through the congested territory of cosmopolitanism.