ABSTRACT
Theorists often see cosmopolitanism as emphasising conversation and tolerance across difference, in part because of its association with the kind of enlarged imagination which comes from travel and wider experiences. Cosmopolitanism allows for understanding, even, in Anthony Appiah's words, 'in a world of strangers'. Cosmopolitanism re-emerged in international discourse to address some of the tensions that arose in the immediate aftermath of the end of the Cold War. The notion of a world in which people can get along because they are more alike than unalike and can agree on shared values of humanity has long been described in Western thought as cosmopolitanism. As Meg Samuelson has pointed out, Zoe Wicomb's work engages with storytelling and its paradoxical tenuousness and power. The spectre of incommensurability haunts the affirmation of cosmopolitanism and the certainties of history. Misunderstanding, the very messiness of human relations in the present, and our own remembering of our pasts threaten to disrupt order.
