‘Belonging’ in the cosmopolitan imaginary

In the 1990s, much discourse both in and about global civil society was beset by a false opposition. On the one side was the utopia of cosmopolitan liberalism. On the other was the specter of reactionary nationalism or fundamentalism. And, of course, in a variety of settings, some national and some diasporically transnational, the value loading was reversed: fundamentalist or national utopia, threatening specter of cosmopolitan liberalism. September 11 and the ensuing conflicts and upheavals refocused the discussion, but did not altogether dislodge the false opposition. They gave renewed emphasis to the image of Islam as the bad other to liberalism and progress. They encouraged the US government to demonize Islam and gave it license to extend the condemnation to the secular (if extraordinarily illgoverned) Arab state of Iraq. Commentators reconfigured the false opposition in the contrast of the alleged medieval character of the Taliban to the more modern West. Leaders who had not previously shown any strong interest in gender equality embraced it when it worked to reinforce the contrast. Not only equality and human rights issues, but numerous other indicators were harnessed to show the lack of ‘progress’ in Islamic societies, including even the sheer high-tech military prowess of America. The language of liberal democracy was invoked to explain the need for externally imposed regime change in Iraq (and possibly other Islamic societies). But at the same time, the September 11 attacks and the dominant western responses to them upset the widespread 1990s vision of an easy, happy progress towards cosmopolitan democracy. The US government’s postSeptember 11 policies undermined multilateralism; security policies of many countries impeded flows of international visitors and migrants; already growing economic problems and protectionist impulses were exacerbated. The prospects for cosmopolitan democracy, and the more general discourse of liberal internationalism of which it is a part, look less promising D E B A T E