Being cosmopolitan is generally held as a good thing. Its up there with wealth, happiness and birdsong in the things which our society values more than anything else. Or so I thought. Certainly, ‘cosmopolitan’ is held in higher general regard than ’small-mindedness’, ‘xenophobia’ or ‘racism’. Yet I have a feeling it has remained in possession of a somewhat vague value status, in the same way of terms like ‘multi-cultural’ which positively embody diversity yet equally possess that dangerous Other embodied in any encounter between disparate cultures (or enculturation, for all you anthropology fans out there).
To describe an area as ‘cosmopolitan’ can thus be seen to have no fixed meaning (here we go, Foucault again!). This is contextual, and to explain the power-knowledge nexus here would be tiresomely dull and irrelevant, so we’ll stick with the common-sense interaction between context and meaning.
In those glossy tourist guides and University Welcome leaflets, ‘cosmopolitan’ has positive connotations of a place being open, accepting and diverse. It suggests synonyms such as chiche, fashionable, exciting. Yet – and here we demonstrate Foucault’s good point about context and the power-knowledge nexus – a description of “certain districts” of a nearby city by a friend as “so cosmopolitan… I could scarcely believe I was still in England… it was like Bangladesh” implies a whole other series of knowledge/power relations.
In this sense, ‘cosmopolitan’ is merely ironically positve. It has alien – and thus negative – characteristics, it is the Other, the Foreign and (implicitly) the Enemy which is howling at the doors of the proverbial stout yeomanry of Britain. It is not symptomatic of a subjectivity which views diversity as healthy, wealthy or vibrant (in any economic, social or cultural sense), it rather implies the opposite. A threatened culture, a marauding globalised cosmopolitanism eating up at our good British values of intolerance and homogeneity.
Beyond proving a small example of Foucaultian philosophy, all that’s left is to say that if cosmopolitanism is interpreted as diverse, challenging, variegated, culturally rich and innovative. Sign me up!
