ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to explore the variables of contemporary cosmopolitanism in the current state of globalized, increasingly interpenetrating and highly technological societies, while rooting them not only in displacement but also in journeying. The dilemma of foreignness comes down to one of liberty versus fraternity, the pleasures of freedom versus the pleasures of belonging. Isamu Noguchi was born in Los Angeles as the illegitimate son of a Japanese poet father. Noguchi was actually born within the same decade that the airplane was invented. According to the architect and philosopher who wrote the introduction to the artist's autobiography, Noguchi 'took off' at the age of two or rather was 'taken off by his Japanese-bound mother in what has since proved to be a half century of world peregrinations'. Whereas the World-Citizenship ideal had in the past theorized 'cosmopolitan' as an attribute progressively becoming a noun, the mobilities Paradigm seems nowadays to assign cosmopolitan qualities to one's embedded-embodied cognition.
