ABSTRACT
Martha Nussbaum, Costas Douzinas argues that Humanism and cosmopolitanism involve cultivating a critical examination of the way of life; the capacity to identify with others in different groups, cultures or nations, and a 'narrative imagination' that helps to understand and empathise with others. This chapter draws gendered and dialectic forms of difference are concerned and confront the way new cosmopolitanism is mainstreamed with critical feminist and postcolonial engagements reaching out beyond Europe. A Eurocentric 'Civilisation' entangled with a mission of Christianity can be traced back to colonial roots of the 15th century. Despite ambitious efforts to implement human rights all over the world, idealistic vision concerning cosmopolitanism and universal human rights is confronted with the criticism of Western primacy and its empirical record of failing inclusive goals of global justice. A feminist reading of subaltern cosmopolitanism offers an alternative frame that combines postcolonial critique as perspectives from the South and critical knowledge in and across Europe with feminist transnational inquiry.
