Introductory

Cosmopolitanism is a concept with a variety of political, economic, moral, and cultural aspects and approaches, based on the basic premise that all human beings are, can be or should be citizens in a single community. Political cosmopolitanism explores the conditions of a citizenship without borders, balancing universal citizenship against citizenship confined within national states. It scrutinizes the relationship between local or national government and international governance bodies, such as the United Nations or the European Union, and raises debates concerning nationalism, ethnicity, but also xenophobia, migration and diaspora identities. Prominent political events and trends in the world have recently become manifest in a turn away from universalist politics and multiculturalism towards narrowly nationalist attitudes (Brexit as “reclaiming British independence”, “America First”, but also the anti-migration politics of Central European states). The social and economic aspects of cosmopolitanism are related to the idea that it is social and economic principles that constitute universal citizenship. The global economy regulated by human rights (civil, political, social, economic and cultural ones defined by the UN) and other legal norms guaranteeing social and economic justice is seen as the materialization of this citizenship.

From the meeting of “world citizens”, a plurality of truths emerges in a vast spectrum of globalized media that presents “facts” and “truth” in the same communicative modality and with equal power as false information. These developments have ushered in the so-called “post-truth” or “post-factual” era. Moral cosmopolitanism postulates a universal community that shares a set of ethical principles, such as the principles of justice which are the basis of human rights. They tackle challenges such as global solidarity, responsibility towards future generations, environmental changes, but also the fundamental questions of cognitive and moral relativism.

Cultural approaches to cosmopolitanism focus on the idea of a globalized world culture opposed to the diversity of particular cultures. Globalization has enabled the great mobility of cultural capital and contributed to cultural homogenization. Yet, resistance to these processes leads to an emphatic assertion of local cultures. Cultural cosmopolitanism deals with questions of cultural identity, multiculturalism and intercultural dialogue. It also studies language, which remains one of the key defining features of culture. It explores whether the encounter with otherness is an opportunity for openness and universalism or motivation for rejection of the other and a defensive attitude of enclosing oneself within one’s cultural limits.

This special issue of Human Affairs brings together selected papers that were presented at the Asixoxe (Let’s Talk) Conference on African Philosophy, Prague 2018, jointly organized by the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, and the Centre of Global Studies of the Institute of Philosophy at the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague. Conference discussed questions that cut across a spectrum of meanings. As the various papers will show, a variety of topics were explored, related to, for example, cultural and geopolitical identity. The role of language and culture in the expression of political identity was questioned, and the relationship between race, language, gender, and socio-economic status analyzed. How can migrants, in particular those from underprivileged regions, claim rights in the globalized world? What is the relationship between language and decolonization? Finally, the relationships and interdependencies between globalized cultural manifestations and national, grassroots cultural initiatives were explored. How does the “multilingual local” (Orsini) interact with “world literature”? Where does African literature in English, French or Portuguese position itself with respect to the global literary market, on the one hand, and to literatures in African languages, on the other? What are the philosophical discourses in African languages? Has “mainstream” African philosophy been decolonized?

Prof. Stephen Chan’s paper was the keynote lecture at the Asixoxe Conference, Prague 2018. It deals with theoretical debates, but is also a series of reflections based on personal experiences and participation in relationships between China and Africa. Being of Chinese origin and having lived in Africa for many years, Prof. Chan has travelled throughout the continent, working in war zones, the great city slums, as well as in high government office and universities. He has first-hand experience of both local and global cosmopolitanisms, particularly concerning the relationship between the African continent and China. Prof. Chan thinks that local cosmopolitanism emerges when the global is appropriated and indeed refracted in local terms that not only make the global sympathetically operational, but do so desirably with such local richness that—in its refraction—the global is itself changed, that is, some form of equity, or at least equal exchange occurs. These interactions are noticeable in the various contexts that Prof. Chan describes with particular humour and a sense of detail, including, for example, the challenges of postcolonial studies, debates on African identity, power of African cultural creativity, cooperation with foreign countries, particularly China, as well as the struggle against all kinds of hegemony.

Valérie Bankóová approaches the issue of cosmopolitanism, particularly the role of Africa in a polycentric world, from a specific and unusual perspective, namely that of Africa’s rapidly growing number of inhabitants, which is dramatically increasing its proportion of the world’s population. This context constitutes a great challenge calling for a kind of institutional cosmopolitanism. To support this, Bankóová points to the new development trends promoted in the recent United Nations Global Agenda for sustainable development goals (SDGs). She thinks that these have the potential to transform Africa’s geopolitical and economic position in today’s polycentric world, despite the relative lack of attention devoted to them on global fora and in the specialist literature. First Bankóová gives a historical overview of African demographics and the population outlook. Secondly, she discusses the economic, social and environmental implications of demographic change. Finally, Bankóová scrutinizes Africa’s changing geopolitical position through Africa’s evolving relations with the EU.

Albert Kasanda examines cosmopolitanism through the philosophical idea of Afropolitanism. This concept lies at the core of a debate about African identity, particularly on account of the new configurations and flows generated by the globalization process. Proponents of this concept belief it has the capacity to better express the way the African continent relates to and negotiates with the world than do conventional African narratives. Kasanda’s paper explores the relevance of this belief, especially through his analysis of Mbembe’s approach to Afropolitanism and his criticism of conventional narratives of African identity and emancipation.

Anke Graness explores the potential of the indigenous South African concept of ubuntu in relation to cosmopolitanism. In her first step, she introduces the concept of ubuntu. Secondly she relies on the ideas of thinkers such as Michael O. Eze and Mogobe B. Ramose to show how ubuntu—a concept in which human beings are essentially relational beings (existing in and through relationships)— help transcend conventional concepts of cosmopolitanism. Her third step is to discuss ubuntu as a cosmopolitan concept with regard to alternative cosmopolitan theories like ‘critical’ (Mignolo 2002) or ‚emancipatory‘ cosmopolitanism (Pieterse, 2006; Ngcoya, 2015).

Dobrota Pucherova explores the issue of Afropolitanism through literature in the new post-globalized African context. She analyzes two migration novels about Afropolitanism by female Nigerian authors: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah (2013) and Sefi Atta’s A Bit of Difference (2013). Pucherová argues that Afropolitanism obscures the reasons why migration from Africa to the West has been increasing, and not decreasing, in the decades since independence. In comparing the two novels, the article focuses on empathy and solidarity towards and between fellow Nigerians, which Chielozona Eze (2011, 2016) sees as crucial to building African civil society and a functional state.

Stephanie Rudwick’s study explores the socio-cultural dynamics of English as a lingua franca (ELF) in relation to how cosmopolitanism is understood in the South African current context. More specifically, Rudwick looks at the link between ELF and cosmopolitanism in higher education. In 2016, students at Stellenbosch University (SU) triggered a language policy change that made English (as opposed to Afrikaans) the primary medium for teaching and learning. English won recognition as the academic lingua franca for at least two socio-political reasons: First, English is considered more ‘neutral’ than Afrikaans (which continues to be strongly associated with the Afrikanerdom of the white minority), and second, because English is arguably connected to cosmopolitanism and an international institutional status. Despite English becoming the academic lingua franca, it continues to be trapped in an ambivalent climate with tensions being felt among policy planners, language practitioners, higher education managers, academic staff and students. Ultimately, this paper argues that ambiguity is one of the most defining features of English in South Africa and that a complex range of Cosmopolitan, Afropolitan and glocal African identity trajectories reflect the power dynamics of English in the country.

As already observed, the concept of cosmopolitanism includes a wide variety of meanings, and it is a topic that has attracted much debate at a time when the world is changing and the issues of politics, economy and identity are highly complex. It is my feeling that this special issue of Human Affairs has made a good attempt at shedding new light on these issues. In addition, without pretending to have exhausted the debate, this issue opens up a privileged space for a critical and constructive dialogue between contributors, readers and researchers on the evolution of Africa, particularly in this globalization era. Last but not least, I am grateful to the “Global Conflicts and Local Interactions” research program, Strategy AV21, Czech Academy of Sciences, which made this special thematic issue possible.