ABSTRACT
Cosmopolitanism essentially concerns questions of transcendence and, in common sense terms, what might be thought of as worldliness. As such, it is perhaps a controversial concept to revisit in times of the unilateral military hegemony of the United States, the so-called 'war on terror' and Iraq war at the beginning of the new century. 'Political cosmopolitanism', as the introduction goes on to explain, is located more firmly in the realm of practice, and so operates in more basic terms relating to equal and shared principles governing the behaviours of states to one another and their citizens, along the lines of international legal principles. Feminist international relations scholars have written extensively about the problem of women's missing voices and influences in relation to the 'war on terror', in ways that echo directly and indirectly the kinds of concerns raised in Virginia Woolf's essay.
