Cosmopolitan Openness to the Other: An Approximation to the Role of Translation in the Social Theory of Cosmopolitanism

Abstract

This article analyses the role of translation in contemporary theories of cosmopolitanism and, more generally, in a conception of cosmopolitanism as openness to the other. Whereas globalization theory was predominantly silent about the important role of translation in processes of global connectivity, translation has gained a central importance in recent accounts of cosmopolitanism in a context in which the coexistence of multiple modernities and the interaction between them, rather than convergence towards a single global culture, is emphasized. This article examines, first, the role of translation in contemporary theories of cosmopolitanism, focusing especially on two authors: Ulrich Beck and Gerard Delanty. Secondly, it proposes a concept of translation that can account for interactions between different cultures and specify a notion of cosmopolitanism as internalization of the other. Thirdly, it draws some important implications of this analysis for the social theory of cosmopolitanism.