realidades para virem-a-ser: sobre cosmopolíticas

5/26/2018 Realidades para virem-a-ser: sobre cosmopol ticas

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Porto Alegre, v. 16, n. 1, jan./jul. 2013ISSN impresso 1516-084X ISSN digital 1982-1654

INFORMTICA NA EDUCAO: teoria & prtica

...to think, that is, to create, that is, to resist.

Isabelle Stengers, 2001.

1 Introduction

To assume that all things we want to descri-be humans and non-humans alike canbe done so properly only in terms of socie-

ties, requires a contrast a momentum of cos-mopolitics to the very abstract distinctionsupon which our classical understanding of so-ciology and its key terms rests: The social asdened in opposition to the non-social, socie-ty in opposition to nature. The concept of cos-mopolitics tries to avoid such modernist stra-tegy that A. N. Whitehead called bifurcation

of nature (cf. WHITEHEAD, 1978, 2000). Theinventive production of contrasts names a cos-mopolitical tool which does not attempt to de-nounce, debunk, replace or overcome abstract,exclusivist oppositions that suggest divisionsas either or-relations. Rather, as the Belgianphilosopher of science Isabelle Stengers stres-ses, the contrast will have to be celebrated in

the manner of a new existent, adding a new di-

Realidades para virem-a-ser: sobre cosmopolticas

Realities to be-come: on cosmopolitics

Michael SchillmeierInstitut fr Soziologie

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitt Mnchen

Resumo: Considerar que todas as coisas que desejamos descre-ver sejam humanas e no-humanas s podem ser apropria-damente feitas em termos de sociedades, requer um contras-te um momento de cosmopolitismo- com as vrias distinesabstratas sobre as quais recaem nossa compreenso sociolgicaclssica e seus termos chaves: o O social como conceito decosmopoltica tenta evitar tal estratgia modernista que A.N.Whitehead denominou bifurcao da natureza (cf. WHITEHEAD,1978, 2000). A produo inventiva de contrastes nomeia umaferramenta cosmopoltica que no tenta denunciar, ridicularizar,

substituir ou superar oposies abstratas que sugerem divisescomo isto...ou. Ao invs disso, como a lsofa belga IsabelleStengers enfatiza, o contraste haver de ser celebrado na formade uma nova dimenso do cosmos (STENGERS, 2011, p. 513). Acosmopoltica, ento, associa-se com hbitos que experimenta-mos de formas a nos tornarmos capazes de novas experincias(STENGERS, 2011, p. 241) e abre para a possibilidade de agen-ciar com o Outro no esperado, o no-normal, o no-humano, ono-social, o in-comum. O outro a existncia de um mundopossvel, como disseram Gilles Deleuze e Felix Guattari (1994,p. 17-18). a condio para nossa passagem de um mundo paraoutro. O Outro [...] faz com que o mundo v adiante.Palavras-chave: Cosmopoltica. Tecnologia. Ontologia. Whi-tehead.

Abstract:To assume that all things we want to describe hu-mans and non-humans alike can be done so properly only interms of societies, requires a contrast a momentum of cosmo-politics to the very abstract distinctions upon which our classicalunderstanding of sociology and its key terms rests: The socialas dened in opposition to the non-social, society in opposi-tion to nature. The concept of cosmopolitics tries to avoid suchmodernist strategy that A. N. Whitehead called bifurcation of na-ture (cf. WHITEHEAD, 1978, 2000). The inventive production ofcontrasts names a cosmopolitical tool which does not attempt todenounce, debunk, replace or overcome abstract, exclusivist op-positions that suggest divisions as eitheror-relations. Rather,as the Belgian philosopher of science Isabelle Stengers stresses,the contrast will have to be celebrated in the manner of a newexistent, adding a new dimension to the cosmos (STENGERS,2011, p. 513). Cosmopolitics, then, engages with habits we ex-periment with in order to become capable of new experiences(STENGERS, 2001, p. 241) and opens up the possibility of agencyof the non-expected Other, the non-normal, the non-human, thenon-social, the un-common. The Other is the existence of a pos-sible world, as Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (1994, p. 17-18)have put it. It is the condition for our passing from one world toanother. The Other [...] makes the world go by.Keywords: Cosmopolitics. Technology. Ontology. Whitehead.

SCHILLMEIER, Michael. Realities to be-come: on cosmopolitics.Informtica na Educao: teoria e prtica, Porto Alegre, v. 16, n.1, p. 101-122, jan./jun.2013.


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mension to the cosmos (STENGERS, 2011, p.

513). Cosmopolitics, then, engages with habitswe experiment with in order to become capa-ble of new experiences (STENGERS, 2001, p.241) and opens up the possibility of agency ofthe non-expected Other, the non-normal, thenon-human, the non-social, the un-common.The Other is the existence of apossible world,as Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (1994, p.

17-18) have put it. It is the condition for ourpassing from one world to another. The Other[...] makes the world go by.

Cosmopolitics, as I would like to suggest,draws our attention topracticesas a mode ofcreative resistance to supposedly given, nor-mal or hegemonic realities and related divi-sions that bring these realities into existen-

ce. It opens up the space for a cosmopoliticalsociology as a provocative research agendain as much as it tries to resist to merely re-

present social reality but to create it instead.Beyond mere description, cosmopolitical socio-logy aims to fabricate possible contraststo thecommon economy of knowledge production of

social realities. Cosmopolitical sociology, then,is through and through a political endeavourthat tackles our lack of resistance to the pre-sent (DELEUZE; GUATTARI, 1994). Thereby,as Bruno Latour has argued, the notion of cos-mos and politics are relational terms:

Cosmos protects against the premature clo-sure of politics, and politics against the pre-mature closure of cosmos. [...] if cosmos isto mean anything, it must embrace, literally,everything including all the vast numbers ofnon-human entities making humans act (LA-TOUR, 2004, p. 454).

Such a reading of cosmopolitics names a visi-ble contrast to classical accounts of critical the-

ories of cosmopolitanism that nd their origin in

Immanuel Kants cosmopolitanism.1Following

Stengers, cosmopolitics is not designed pri-marily for generalists; it has meaning onlyin concrete situations where practitionersoperate (STENGERS, 2005, p. 994). Hence,the powerful and asymmetric division betwe-en theory and practice whereby practices aremeant to ll in the empty boxes of genera-lizing theoreticians (ibid) is resisted. Rather,

a cosmopolitical understanding of practices isactively linked with the concept of minority:practices diverge, and their divergence, not tobe confused with contradiction, makes themrecalcitrant to any consensual denition of a

common good [or social order, MS] that wouldassign them roles and turn them into functio-nal parts of public [social, MS] order (STEN-

GERS, 2010b, p. 16). Cosmopolitical sociologyaims not to denounce or eliminate realities butto produce and construct situated2contraststo the different modes of normalization, whi-ch provoke a lack of resistance to the presentin the rst place. These situated contrasts are

enabled bypracticesas they emerge in the waysociologists are connected with the respectiveeld of research. Such a connection is a risky

relation since it is experimental in character in-sofar as the objects of research, i.e.the eldand its actors human and nonhuman alike may object to the view sand strategies of thesocial researcher.3The researcher on the otherhand enacted by the objects researched is

nevertheless meant to be a good practitioneras well. S/he is thought to create a coherentaccount of the empirical matters of concern

1Whenever the notion 'cosmopolitanism' is used, it refers tothe Greek/Kantian tradition.2See e.g.Haraway (1988).3See Stengers (1997, 2000, 2010, 2011). Science and Tech-nology Studies (STS) offer a wide and heterogeneous eldof innovative science research that cannot be served justice

here. See e.g. Biagioli (1999), Latour (1987, 1988, 1990,1994), Pickering (1995), Rheinberger (2006), Shapin & Schaf-fer (1985).


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(LATOUR, 2005), which enables a possible

contrast that diverges from the researcherscommon modes of description and perceptionof the very situation (cf. LATIMER; SKEGGS,2011).

2 Thinking Societies beyond the

Bifurcation of Nature

From their research experience, both socialand naturalist scientists know very well thathuman routines and institutionalized settingsor functions, devices, technologies and ar-tefacts, which are considered facts, are thevery achievement of collective action of he-terogeneous entities, human and nonhuman.It is precisely the very collective action thatbrings these emerging facts into being, i.e.the creative process by which these relationsgain local endurance, that turns invisible andmute once facts become human routine or te-chnology. This intriguing relation between theachievement of collective action that relates

heterogeneous actors with diverging practicesand supposedly matter of facts names thevery strange and riddling double bind of so-cialrealities: The more entities human andnonhuman alike become social (gain/haveendurance) the more these entities appear asgiven facts and not as achieved relations ofdiverging practices. It names a rather seduc-

tive situation provoking the risk of what A.N.Whitehead (1978) called the fallacy of mispla-ced concreteness. The latter conates the abs-tract with the concrete, explaining and xing

the latter by the former. In our case there areat least two ways of possible misplacement: 1)To deny matter of facts as being fabricated bythe collective achievements of diverging prac-

tices, or 2) to deny their factish reality in the

process of creating novel realities and to treat

them as mere fetishes instead (cf. LATOUR,1999; 2010). The rst misplacement would

x entities as mere facts and thereby rende-ring the lively histories invisible which wouldtell about heterogeneous actors and divergingpractices that fabricate the multiplicity of facts.The second misplacement would render factsas mere systems of belief, as blank surfaces

onto which we project our manipulations, va-lues, desires, feelings and emotions etc., easilyto be dismissed by the critical mind as nothingin itself, a cosa non gratawhich only has beenerroneously been taken as an autonomous ob-ject, powerfully actor, a thing in itself (ibid).

For us moderns, the seduction of the doublebind of socialrealities led to a curious but well-

-established form of disciplined differentiationbetween the realm of collective achievementbelonging to society analyzed by social scien-tists and the realm of facts as part of natureanalysed by natural scientists. For sociologiststhe social appears to be the most normal andpowerful tool to describe and explain the com-plexity of the world we live in. It also functionsas a marker of difference to other disciplinesand sciences. Thus, for sociologists it is simi-larly normal and normalized to defend and de-ne the social against the natural, biological,

physical, psychological or spiritual in order toresist the lure of naturalizing, individualizing orontologizing reality. By doing so, sociologists

un/wittingly stabilize the aforementionedvery modern mode of division that cosmopoli-tical sociologytries to resist: the bifurcation ofnature. The philosopher Whitehead stresses:

No perplexity concerning the object of know-ledge can be solved by saying there is a mindknowing. [] What I am essentially protes-ting against is the bifurcation of nature intotwo systems of reality, which, in so far they


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are real, are real in different senses. [] Ano-

ther way of phrasing this theory which I amarguing against is to bifurcate nature into twodivisions, namely onto the nature apprehen-ded in awareness and the nature which is thecause of awareness (WHITEHEAD, 1995, p.30).

Obviously, the social as being used and de-fended by most classical sociologists radicalizes

such a bifurcation, since it is not merely themind knowing, but society that apprehendsand knows nature by social awareness orsocial construction that apprehends the mindand nature. Society functions as a placehol-der for a theory of social additions to psychicadditions and like the latter would leaveto nature merely the molecules and the radiantenergy which inuences the mind towards that

perception (WHITEHEAD, 1995, p. 29). Forclassical sociologists society is connected tonature, but the bond has been lost, only so-ciety is aware of, perceives and constructs themind and nature (cf. SCHILLMEIER, 2008).For natural scientist, the bifurcation of nature

draws their attention merely to the causes ofawareness, be it molecules, electrons, atoms,neutrinos etc. ;the social additions to whichsociologists draw attention, are more or lessinconvenient complications. The discussionsconcerning e.g.human genome project, GMOs,stem cells, nanotechnologies, atomic energyetc. are vivid examples of practicing the bi-

furcation of nature.4This decisive and highlymodernistic way of solving the double bind ofsocialreality not only equates the relationshipbetween collective action and facts with therelationship between society and nature, buttreats social and natural facts as competing,

4

At the same though, the created objects are constantly as-sociating and reguring what is meant to set apart: 'society'and 'nature'. See e.g.Latour (1999), Michael (2000).

mutually exclusive and thus confrontational

realities. By representing two self-referentialrealities, society and nature, the social andnatural scientists argument gain full strength,coherence and validity by relating the differen-ces of their mode of explanation in a disjunc-tive manner of the either-or. In effect, socialsciences are busy with demystifying naturalfacts as emerging from within human society

in order not to be conated with natural scien-tists, who for their part are thought to treatfacts as truths belonging to nature and notsociety.5. Society and nature became thestruggle between master words, as IsabelleStengers would say, which can be used to passjudgement without having to encounter or ex-perience, which can be used to avoid turning

the practices of others as witnesses of a pro-blem that is liable to frighten us, that is liableto call into question our own modern require-ments (STENGERS, 2011, p. 330). Obviously,such a mode of relating differences mimics awar like them or us situation,6it conquers andeliminates in order to gain the respective ex-planatory power of dening reality: Whereas

social sciences add the social reality to incre-ase the complexity of reality, natural sciencesare supposed to eliminate the social factor tolet nature speak. At the same time though themoderns are proud of having pacied the con-frontational way of divisions by disciplining theeither-or through the exhibition of tolerance.

5Obviously, this does not mean that a 'social fact' cannotbe treated as a 'natural fact'. Quite on the contrary, it wasmile Durkheim's famous maxim in his 'Rules of SociologicalMethod' (1982) to treat social facts as things. He radicalizedthe method of separating off individual facts from social factsand explaining the former reality through the latter. For hisantipode Gabriel Tarde (2009) such a strategy was mistakingthe explanation with what has to be explained. Moreover, hisconcept of 'thing' was more than meagre (cf. SCHILLMEIER,2008; 2012b).6In that sense, the polemic controversies of the so-called 'sci-ence wars' was predictable, as Stengers rightly points out (andpredicted). See Stengers (2001, 2010a, b).


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Nothing is easier for modern man than tole-

rance; proud to be adults, the moderns arecapable of confronting a world stripped of itsguarantees and enchantments (STENGERS,2011, p. 303). Consequently, social scientistsand natural scientists tolerate the respectiveother by sharing the idea that what is knownas either social or natural needs to be pro-tected and armed, since it is able to disqualify

the respective reality of the other as not rele-vant, as a mere added reality to the realm ofones own reality, or as a danger to lay into theproduction of each regimes of reality and rela-ted forms of knowledge. At the same time, themoderns celebrate such niceties of relating asa civilized way of enduring contingency: Throu-gh the curse of tolerance (STENGERS, 2011,

p. 303) it became a stubborn fact (WHITEHE-AD, 1978) of modern thought that the questionconcerning the nature of social things humanand non-human alike requires the very bifur-cation of nature.

Since the beginning of 19thcentury this letto another long-lasting scenario of the greatdivide, between scientic experts and lay peo-ple, that is between the scientic, rational, or

objective approach to a situation and the be-liefs customs, habits, illusions [] that dene

the actors (STENGERS, 2011, p. 308).7To de-mystify the expertocratic (self-) understandingof science, social scientists have been keento address the social construction of scienti-

c facts and knowledge by outlining precise-ly the non-scientic beliefs, customs, habits,and illusions as being the core set of scientic

practices. Although it is of great importanceto trouble any claim of authority to the truth,

7Current accounts of accompanying and assessing scienticinnovation highlight the co-emergence and co-existence of'science' and 'society' by bringing back 'society' into the poli-

tics of governance of emerging techno-scientic knowledgeand objects (FUNTOWICZ; RAVETZ 1993; NOWOTNY et al.,2004).

the social constructionist attempt missed out

to address the specicities and singularity ofexperimental scientic practices: the creation

of experimental objects. The creation of theexperimental device creates, gives birth to anew relation of forces: The art of the experi-menter is in league with power: the inventionof the power to confer on things the power of

conferring on the experimenter the power of

speaking in their name(STENGERS, 1997, p.165, original emphasis). In this way, scien-ce justies the feeling of astonishment it is

producing. Stengers stresses: Scientists re-cognize nature as their sole authority, asthe phenomenon they are concerned with, butthey know that the possibility for this autho-rity to create authority is not a given. It is up

to them to constitute nature as an authority(2000, p. 93). Moreover, these creations makehistory in the way they change and producenew collectives between humans and non-hu-mans. Here, then, we nd the singularity of

modern sciences: to have invented a device,which allows a new actor to participate in dis-cussions on knowledge:

The singularity of scientic arguments is that

they involve third parties. Whether they behuman or non-human is not essential: whatis essential is that it is with respect to themthat scientists have discussions and that, ifthey can only intervene in the discussion asrepresented by a scientist, the arguments

of the scientists themselves only have in-uence if they act as representatives for thethird party. With this notion of third party, itis obviously the phenomenon studied thatmakes an appearance, but in the guise of aproblem. For scientists, it is actually a matterof constituting phenomena as actors in thediscussion, that is, not only of letting themspeak, but of letting them speak in a waythat all other scientists recognize as reliable(2000, p. 85, emphasis by MS).


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With this, an event appears. This notion of

the event, which Stengers borrows from thephilosophy of A. N. Whitehead (1978) and G.Deleuze (2006), supposes the emergence ofsome novelty in an unforeseeable way. A rele-vant occurrence, which is nevertheless contin-gent, not necessary: it happened, but it couldas well not have happened, and it is neitherpredictable nor reproducible. But once it has

taken place, it conditions facts coming after it,of which it will become a constitutive part. Theevent is the terrain of invention8. Still, experi-mental sciences have always been seduced bytheir inventions insofar as scientists try to bla-ck box or undo the trace of the event in orderto argue that the experiment functions only toillustrate the truth of facts, a rational truth

(STENGERS, 1997; 2000).This is why it is im-portant to draw upon the singularity of scien-ce withouttaking it as the universal and onlyway of creating the world. For a cosmopoliticalsociology this includes bringing into existen-ce relations between busy scientic practices

and empowered minorities who have becomecollectively able to object, question, and impo-se as mattering aspects situation that wouldotherwise be mistreated or neglected (STEN-GERS, 2010, p. 27).

3 Concernedness

Cosmopolitical sociology tries to trouble su-pposedly matter of facts and turn them intothe articulation of matters of concern, to use

8'The idea of a contingent process excludes explanation whichwould transform the description into a deduction. It also ex-cludes arbitrariness, which would insist on the contingencyonly in order to afrm, in a monotonous manner, that nothinghas taken place, that the constructed signications and en-gendered problems are all valid because they are all relativeto their context. The contingent process invites us to "follow"it, each effect being both a prolongation and a reinvention'(STENGERS, 2000, p. 72).

Latours expression (cf. LATOUR, 2005). Mat-

ters of concern refer to processes of connec-ting heterogeneous entities with divergingpractices, societiesas it were, that make up acontrasting event which enables the creationof new possibilities and new questions for theconcerned entities (STENGERS, 2010b, p. 25).Societal contrasts bring to the fore a concern9for the being/becoming of social realities and

its relations, actors, feelings and practices whe-reby the non-normal, unexpected, uncom-mon, or unknown Other plays a central part.Cosmopolitics highlight the social normalcy ofrealities as a normativeconstruct, an achieve-ment. Thus, the supposedly standard, naturalor (pre-)given identities and universal differen-ces that dene the normal or pathological, the

good or bad etc., the hegemonic and marginalcome into view as the effect of contingent socie-tal controversies, practices and power relationsthat unfold their own situated histories. Whatseems to be specic about modern processes

of normalization is that they do not simply referto processes of inclusion orexclusion. Rather,it is a subtler either-or. Modern normalizationgains power, stability and durability through in-clusion the other by excluding his/her/its ownvoice, interests, desires, i.e. their own way ofdoing things: The others, otherness, or thenon-normal are welcome, are tolerated, butonly according to the rules, knowledge and un-derstanding of the normals. Without the latter

the former are nothing; this is the rule of nor-malization, which and this important is notthe rules and knowledge of anybody, but themajoritarian Fact of Nobody (DELEUZE; GUAT-TARI 1987, p. 118). Differently put: It is themajoritarian fact of somebody who/which dueto his/her/its majoritarian outlook is seen as a

9I use the notion of 'concern' in the Quaker sense of the wordas outlined by Whitehead (1967) and Stengers (2010a, b).


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fact of nobody, a rational truth, a natural fact.

But this nobody has always a name (Nobody,Man) that frames such excessive abstraction:the human, nature, society, etc. Being a ma-joritarian fact of Nobody, the non-normal, theother turns into aprivation, deprivationand al-teration of the normal, the majoritarian fact.The better such a process of inclusion by exclu-sionsucceeds, the more normalization become

stubborn, powerful and socially stable mattersof fact exempting reection considering the la-bour of division involved, i.e.the ways, thesenormalities, normativities, identities and diffe-rences are produced, what and whom theseprocesses make strong, favour or weaken, mar-ginalize and silence (HETHERINGTON; MUNRO,1997; MUNRO, 1997; SCHILLMEIER, 2010).

Michel Foucaults eloquent analyses carve outthe very productive forces of modern powerrelations (discursive practices) through whichthe pathological, the abnormal are observed,analysed, dened, disciplined and controlled by

techno-scientic and medical practices, which

set the rules of normality and reason. Luckily,over the past century, the different agendas ofsocial research have been sensitive to analy-se practices that generate and challenge socialnormalcy: The feminist imaginary and postco-lonial experience, the gure of the oppressed

worker, the migrant, the fugitive, the mad, theglobal stranger and cultural Other, the disabled,the ill, the nonhuman.

To initiate a concern, then, is very muchabout the articulation of a contrast to proces-ses of normalization that by including the othernecessarily have to exclude their very modeof existence that is highly indifferent to whatis considered normal (including ones ownposition). To initiate a concern is very muchabout articulating contrasts that articulate di-

fferences as the creative activity enacting aconcern for others, for otherness. Such a con-

cern is cosmological since it highlights that the

process of creation is the form of unity of theUniverse (WHITEHEAD, 1967, p. 179) and yetsuch a concern should not be conated with

the dream of a majoritarian cosmos (DELEU-ZE; GUATTARI, 1987, p. 117). Majority, soDeleuze & Guattari (p. 116-7),

[...] implies a constant, of expression or

content, serving as a standard measure bywhich to evaluate it. Let us suppose that theconstant or standard is the average adult--white-heterogeneous-European-male spe-aking a standard language. [...] It is obviousthat man holds the majority, even if he isless numerous than mosquitoes, children,women, blacks, peasants, homosexuals, etc.That is because he appears twice, once in the

constant and again in the variable from whichthe constant is extracted. Majority assumes astate of power and domination, not the otherway round. It assumes the standard measu-re, not the other way round.

Thus, there is no majoritarian becomingbut only a becoming minoritarian. Becomingminoritarian, so Deleuze & Guattari, is making

possible a becoming over which they [minori-ties] have no ownership, into which they the-mselves may enter (ibid). The latter suggestthat minorities can be dened properly, buttheir uni-verse should be conceived as a mul-ti-verse (JAMES, 1912), since becoming is thebecoming of everybody, and that becoming iscreation (ibid).This does not mean, though,that a minority is not in itself free of the riskof being caught by the Fact of Nobody assu-ming a specic state power, domination and

standard measure that resists the becoming ofanybody. By doing so it would conate mino-rity with majority.10Analysing these processes

10Elsewhere I have shown this point in detail by analysing 'dis-ability studies' which follow a 'social model' as the major factof constituting disability (cf. SCHILLMEIER, 2009a, b; 2010).


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of becoming, contingent and heterogeneous

actors (human and non-human alike) becomevisible: novel, experimental, speculative reali-ties to be-come who/which are not only crea-ting and exemplifying but also questioning andaltering the different modes of social orderingand its immanent power relations. These pro-cesses assemble the eventfulness of realitiesand name the adventures of cosmopolitics:

the creativity of the world as the throbbingemotion of the past hurling into a new trans-cendent fact. It is ying dart, of which Lucre-tius speaks, hurled beyond the bounds of theworld (WHITEHEAD, 1967, p. 177).

4 Cosmopolitical events

The entities of concern that become visi-ble are cosmopolitical events contributory tothe process of becoming (WHITEHEAD, 1978,p. 28). They dont t an unchanging subject

of change (ibid, p. 29) such as e.g. the hu--manthat could be taken as a majoritarian andtranscendental gure of cosmopolitan society.

Hence, cosmopolitics should not be conated

with the Kantian philo-political project of mo-dern humanism. Nor should it be mistaken as arenewed ancient political project that closelyrelated to the former aims a perpetual pea-ce in which everyone might envisage themsel-ves as members in their own right of the worl-dwide civil society, in accordance with citizensrights (STENGERS, 2005, p. 994). Rather, itdraws attention to the very situatedness ofagencies human and nonhuman alike thatquestion, disrupt and alter the normalcy ofmodes of orderings and related actors. Throu-gh the diverse ways of how heterogeneous en-tities e.g. humans and nonhumans rela-

te, novel feelings, meanings and thoughts are

created concerning such questions as who is

acting?, what is given as routine or as a com-mon relation?, what is seen or felt as a nor-mal/ized set of activities?. The social normalcyturns into an event and is getting complicated,re-created by it without being fully conditio-ned by its effects. For cosmopolitical sociology,then, the event is not be explained by the hu-man social, but the human social becomes an

event initiated by the multiplicity of emerging,possible agencies contributory to the processof becoming.

To be sure, to set a cosmopolitical contrastto Kants modern ethos of cosmopolitanismdoes not mean to dismiss it altogether. Cos-mopolitics very much shares the de-territoriali-zing idea of resisting to the present as a mere-

ly given, normalized, enforced set of rules andnorms. Following Whitehead (1967, p. 83):

The creation of the world said Plato is thevictory of persuasion over force. The worth ofmen consists in their liability to persuasion.They can persuade and can be persuaded bythe disclosure of alternatives, the better andthe worse. [...] Thus in a live civilization the-re is always an element of unrest. For sensi-tiveness to ideas means curiosity, adventure,change.

At the same time, though, cosmopoliticstries to resist a critical anthropology whichconnes the very nature of human being as the

only cosmopolitan agent. For a cosmopoliticalethos, cosmopolitical agency is not incarcerateto human nature but unforeseeable, multipleand eventful. As argued by Stengers, cosmo-politics is about practices and for practitioners.It is a political practice against any authorityof generalists and normative philosophies. Forcosmopolitics neither the subject, nor socie-

ty and nature are permanent in the sense ofsubstance, but as form (WHITEHEAD, 1978,


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p. 29). Form is a direct repudiation of Kants

doctrine of substance:

Forms suffer changing relations; actual enti-ties perpetually perish subjectively, but areimmortal objectively. Actuality in perishingacquires objectivity, while it looses subjectiveimmediacy. It loses its nal causation which is

its internal principle of unrest, and it acquiresefcient causation whereby it is the ground

of obligation characterizing the creativity. Ac-tual occasions in their formal constitutionsare devoid of all indetermination. Potentialityhas passed into realization. They are comple-te and determinate matter of fact, devoid ofall indecision. They form the ground of obli-gation. But eternal objects, and propositions,and some more complex sorts of contrasts,involve in their own natures indecision. They

are, like all entities, potentials for the processof becoming (WHITEHEAD, 1978, p. 29).

By analysing forms, [t]he deniteness of

fact is due its forms; but the individual fact is acreature, and creativity is the ultimate behindall forms, inexplicable by forms, and conditio-ned by its creatures (ibid, p. 20). By drawing

on the nexus of actual occasions as events,Whitehead avoids to substantializepermanen-ce and change in a majoritarian way. This isprecisely the contrast the proposed cosmopoli-tical sociology wishes to make: By addressingthe eventfulness of social relations (societies)there is no need to substantialize permanenceand change into the world of humans on the

one hand [subjects that know, things as appea-rances, phenomena] and non-humans [objectsto be known, things themselves, noumena]on the other. Differently put, a cosmopoliticalsociology resists the majoritarian modernisttradition to equate human relations with socialrelations that are equated with society thatfrees us from non-human relations, which are

equated with the necessities of natural rela-

tions which belong to nature. Such tradition

has been taught and learned for a long timeand consequently appears highly stubborn topossible contrasts. The stubbornness is mostevident when possible contrasts are perceivedas oppositions, as adverse opposites (TARDE,1899) that suggest an either-or situation,which according to the cosmopolitical propo-sal (STENGERS, 2005) as advocated here, is a

rather lossy [verlustreich] activity or war-likeoperation. Oppositions as entities of a maxi-mum (contradicting) difference unfold the lo-gic of the either-or. Still, to just dismiss theeither-or would be foolish since they play animportant and mundane part in our lives. Cos-mopolitical sociology conceives the either-oras a specic and simplied mode of difference

that exhibits a maximum of difference withaminimum of repetition in relation to differen-ce itself (cf. DELEUZE, 2001; TARDE, 1899).The either-or names a distinction from whichlife has been emptied as Georg Simmel (1997,p. 104) and thus lacks creation, diminishespossible creatures, and seeks homogeneityby destroyingnovel togetherness (WHITEHE-AD, 1978, p. 21). In that sense, cosmopoliticalsociology tries to pacify or civilize either-or--differences by turning them into a mode ofcreation: Cosmopolitical sociology ic concernedwith multiplying differences as contraststo thetrenchant either-or. Accordingly, cosmopoli-tical sociology is interested in peace and not

war, since it advocates an ecology of practices(STENGERS, 2010a, b; 2011)11 that does not

11On 'ecology of practice', see Stengers (2010b, p. 25): 'Usingthe term ecology means that practices are to be characterizedin irreducibly etho-eco/logical termsthat is, in terms that donot dissociate the ethosof a practice and its oikos, not only thematter-of-fact environment but the way it denes its relationwith other practices and the opportunities of the environment.From this point of view, new connections or a changing con-

nection, or a change in the environment, are events indeed, apossible transformation of what we would have been temptedto accept as the identity of a practice'.


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diminish, denounce, kill, substrate the (emer-

ging) actors and agencies involved, but aims attheir multiplication.Cosmopolitical sociology unfolds a specula-

tive research agenda which a) promotes thecreative agency of ideas (WHITEHEAD, 1967,p. 25) as lure[s], explicitly and mutely appea-ling for an imaginative leap (STENGERS, 2001,p. 240), and b) installs its own philosophical

test as giving its chance to peace or, moreprecisely, as fabricating the conceptual possi-bility of peace in order for us to be existentiallyfabricated by it (STENGERS, 2001, p. 241).For cosmopolitical sociology as scientifcpracti-ces, this requires to outline not only that peaceis always a fabricated peace [...] , selective,partial, specialized and potentially conictual

(ibid, p. 241), but to engage with fabricatingpeaceas the aim of social research itself. Cos-mopolitical research, then, unfolds an eventfuland immanently risky practice whereby politicsis distributed among researcher and resear-ched. Consequently, the research set by theresearcher is always at risk of being objectedby the objects researched. Cosmopolitical re-search is not a mere representational act, oras Stengers (2010b, p. 24) would say, a te-chnological function of a self-closed scientic

routine and its emerging matter of facts. Ra-ther, it tries to draw our research attention oneventfulness of societies.

Now I am able to specify what can be un-

derstood as cosmopolitical events. Firstly, cos-mopolitical events refer to the general obser-vation that in the course of life events mayoccur that unbutton the world taken as nor-mal and in consequence disrupt, question andalter common and taken-for-granted relationsof social being and its common ways of descrip-tion. Viruses like the SARS virus mutate from

being benign to becoming a serious threat for

our health (SCHILLMEIER, 2008, forthcoming).

People fall in love. Galileos ball on an inclinedplane silences scholastic power regimes. Mybest friend is pregnant. Fukushima (SCHILL-MEIER, 2011). My father got cancer, his frienddementia. 9/11 etc. All these events are ex-ceptional and extraordinary: they take us bysurprise, they overtake us (CLOOTS, 2009, p.61; see also ULIG, 2008). At the same time,

these events bring into being something newand other, who/which has not been part ofconstituting of the social relations previous tothe event. Moreover, It is the exceptional andextraordinary and its effects the cosmopoliti-cal event that makes us aware of the ordina-ry eventfulness of (social)forms, as outlinedabove. Through the event of the extraordinary

we may tackle the ordinary (and its limits) thatis itself the effect of eventful processes. To besure, cosmopolitical events may happen everyday but they are not everyday events. Notwi-thstanding, cosmopolitical events help to ima-gine the everyday social as different from beingdecided by nature (cf. GARFINKEL, 1967) andthus vulnerable to uncertainty and change.Being a scientic endeavour, cosmopolitical so-ciology is not primarily about the creation ofconcepts, but concerned with the creation ofnovel associations (cf. DELEUZE; GUATTARI,1994).This means that cosmopolitical socialresearch gains a criticalvoice inasmuch as itunbuttons the normalcy of collective action by

multiplying relevant actors and promote theimaginaries of an eventful reality. It includesfor instance to investigate the question con-cerning agency and to research entities thatare thought to generally lack agency be ite.g.children, the disabled, the demented, theill etc. (cf. SCHILLMEIER, 2009; 2010, forthco-ming). This does not only mean to analyse

how these actors and their experiences, fee-


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lings and practices are part of processes and

societal forms of power relations that congureinstitutionalized normalcy, but also how illnessand disability articulate possible forms of cos-mopolitical agency practices which disrupt,question and alter social normalcy.

5 Humans and things contrasting

cosmopolitanism

In more recent discussions within Scienceand Technology Studies (STS), it is preciselynon-human things artefacts, technologies,environmental objects that play a challen-ging role in understanding the eventfulnessof social relations.12 Once, the non-humans

do not merely play the part of objects in op-position to subjects, but gain importance asexistents (STENGERS, 2010b, p. 3), cosmo-politics cannot be thought without the non-hu-man. In such a reading, cosmopolitics drawsour attention on realities to be-come events that concerns alliance [], symbiosis thatbrings into play beings of totally different sca-les and kingdoms, with no possible liation

(DELEUZE; GUATTARI, 1988, p. 262-3; cf. alsoGROSZ, 1999). This in mind, my discussion oncosmopolitics is thought as an incipient rap-prochement to the questionability of realitiesto be-come. Thereby, the relationship betweenhumans and things is of central importance,

since it unfolds the very difference betweenclassical cosmopolitan sociology and cosmopo-litical sociology.

We have already touched briey that the

cosmopolitical position as advocated here

12See e.g.Hetherington & Munro (1998), Latimer & Schillmei-er (2009); Latour (1988a, 1988b, 1990, 1994), Law (1991),Law & Hassard (1999), Michael (2000), Passoth, Peuker &Schillmeier (2012), Schillmeier (2010, 2012a), Schillmeier &Domnech (2010).

names a strong contrast to Kants cosmopo-

litanism. It is important to explicate this con-trast, since the sociological imagination andrelated versions of cosmopolitanism (cf. BRO-WN; HELD, 2010) have been deeply affected wittingly and unwittingly by Kants ethosof knowing [Wissenshaltung] (HEIDEGGER,1987, p. 42).13I agree with Heidegger that formany who dismiss or think they have overco-

me Kants subjectivist turn, they neverthelessremain highly dependent on Kants way of re-asoning. The Kantian metaphysic plays an im-portant role and inuences unwittingly how

social, political and cultural studies, anthro-pologists and historians imagine materiality,be it objects, artefacts or technologies. Notwi-thstanding all the differences of respective ac-

counts, there seems to be a consensus concer-ning the question do artefacts have agency?.The amicable answer, I suppose, would be no.But, to be sure, this does not mean that te-chnologies dont play an important role. Qui-te on the contrary, since K. Marx and manyof the classical gures, anthropologists, social

and cultural studies have been aware of thesocietal embeddedness and relevance of tech-nologies and things. The more so today: It isimperative in contemporary investigations ofmaterial culture to put much efforts in rese-arching the centrality of things within the hu-man and socio-cultural context.

In his introductory notes to The Social Life

of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspecti-ve, Arjun Appadurai documents nicely this de-velopment. It also underlines the updating ofthe Kantian heritage and not so much its chal-lenge orovercoming. Appadurai argues thatthe cultural perspective on things is conditio-

13To be sure, the idea of cosmpolitics is not to dismiss or de-nounce the tradition of 'cosmopolitanism', but to set a contrastto the 'normalized' discourse in order to make it more interest-ing and open.


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ned necessarily by the view that things have

no meaning apart form those that human tran-sactions, attributions, and motivations endowthem with, the anthropological problem is thatthis formal truthdoes not illuminate the con-crete, historical circulation of things (1986, p.5, highlighted by MS). In effect, things, nextto people and what they think things are, needto be followed as well. For Appadurai the an-

thropological problem conrms the Kantiantheoretical point that we humans do things tothings and not the other way round. On otherhand, such a formal truth limits our metho-dological point of view, he argues, if we re-main within the methodological fetishism thatexcessively socializes transactions in things(ibid) and forget to returning our attention to

the things themselves (ibid). Obviously, accor-ding to Appadurai, we continue the practice ofmethodological fetishism insofar as we valuethe importance to follow the things themsel-ves.

6 Theory and practice

What is striking about Appadurais effort tode-sociologize of how to approach the worldof things pursues the very asymmetry of dis-tinctions, which is not only truly Kantian andhighly modernistic, but made the sociologicalthought possible in the rst place: the opposi-tions between facts vs. fetish, theory vs. prac-tice. Both (modes of) divisions are at the he-art of Kants critical and theoretical endeavourhelping to construct a future metaphysics thatproved to be scientic (KANT [1783], 1995).

Obviously, Kant does not use the notion offetish since the subjective position, i.e. theprocess of thought that brings about facts,

is anything but a foolish belief in the powerof objects. Far from it: It is the only reasona-

ble site of construction which is able to provide

the scientic proof of facts objective content;it saves us from the lures of simple specula-tion concerning the power of an external for-ce. It also functions to free us humans fromthe old Platonic Idea, which precisely becausethe latter is non-human causes them to dene

themselves as humans (STENGERS, 2010b,p. 6). For Kant, the Platonic Idea turned into

a human construction. It is the phenomena[Ding fr sich] that has to be distinguishedfrom noumena [Ding an sich]. Thus, it is thelatter theoretical distinction, which will a)distinguish science from shallow babble andwhich will b) proof everybody foolish if s/hebelieves in facts themselves be it in theoryand/or practice.

To be sure, Appadurai does not simply setfacts vs. fetishes. Quite on the contrary, whathe says is that there are no facts, but only theproduction of fetishes. What is important thou-gh, is, that Appadurais argument rests uponthe very clear difference between of how toapproach things theoretically or practically[methodologically]. Theoretically, we know(and subsequently believe) that facts are no-thing but fetishes, phenomena, products andthus nothing in themselves. The production oftheoretical knowledgeis meant to keep fetishesoutside and let pure knowledge/Reason speakinstead. Inpractice though, one cannot denythat things are real since they have effects on

human life, they affect us and thus things can-not be dismissed. Still, one always has to keepin mindthat things are only real because theydo not exist as things themselves. Such amodernist position allows to keep the practicalform of life, in which one causes something tobe fabricated, at a distance from the theore-tical forms of life, in which one has to choose

between facts and fetishes (LATOUR, 2010, p.20-1).


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7 Kants copernican turn socialized

This has been precisely what made Kantscritical philosophy so challenging and lasting:it is the idea not just to belief and speculatebut to proof that objects must conform to ourcognition and not the other way round ([1787]1998 BXVI-II). Objects, Kant stresses in hisCritique of Pure Reason (1787), [...] are given

to us through our sensibility. Sensibility alonesupplies us with intuitions. These intuitionsbecome thought through the understanding,and hence arise conceptions (ibid, B34). ForKant the knowledge of objects is always con-ceptual because only concepts can be known.According to Kant, the subjectivist doctrine ismeant to offer a more successful metaphysicby experimenting with the idea that the objectconforms to the nature of our faculty of intui-tion and not the other way round that intui-tion must conform to the nature of the objects(ibid, BXVI-II).In his Critique of Pure ReasonKant outlined what he called transcendental,a theoretical construction of universal proposi-

tions that address the possibility of experienceas the conditions of an apparent objectiveworld. All accounts that refer to the social lifeor social construction of things would be intotal agreement with Kants Copernican turn,although they wont follow the logic of cogni-tion and proof. Obviously, it is not the mind social constructionist scientist are very criti-

cal about the mind as the origin of objectivecontent but society to which the objectsconform to.

Kants transcendental criticism has pro-found impact on understanding humans andthings since it analyses the relationship as aconstructed one. Kants analysis of the act ofexperience as a process of thought appears so

seductive since it not only rejects a mere sen-

sationalist account which would equate the

things sensed with what the things are. It alsodismisses a mere rationalist metaphysics thatknows things without intuition. As Kant famou-sly has put it: Thoughts without content areempty, intuitions without concepts are blind.This means that objects are given by senseperception, but they become only relevant asa matter of subjective construction. It names

the intermediate [Zwischen] though quitedifferent than the Zwischen as imagined bythe Greeks and the Platonic idea where andwhen humans and things move therein (HEI-DEGGER, 1987, p. 188). For subsequent hu-manist and/or social constructionist accounts,Kants ontology of things provided an episte-mic zone that was meant to criticise any ra-

tionalist, speculative, ontological or positivistclaim. Humans and things cannot be thoughtanymore as divided, but as constructed sin-ce experienced by processes of human thoughtand only by human thought! At the same timethough, humans and things turn out as bifur-cated and as different as possible. So muchso that following Kants subjectivist positionthings themselves [noumena] are merelyreal, given by sense-perception, but not exis-tent. They become existent things for them-selves [phenomena] merely as a constructionof thought. This means, as Whitehead rightlypoints out, by adopting a subjectivist position,for Kant

[...] the temporal world was merely experien-ced[and] no element in the temporal worldcould in itself be an experient. His temporalworld, [...] was in its essence dead, phantas-mal, phenomenal. Kant was a mathematicalphysicist, and his cosmological solution wassufcient for the abstraction to which mathe-matical physics is conned (1978, p. 190).


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To draw upon the importance of thin-gs in order to invent an apparent objectiveworld which is beginning and ending with thethinking and reecting human in time reve-als the metaphysical centre (HEIDEGGER,1987, p. 42) of Kants philosophy. It also ena-bles a constant switching between theory andpractice as long as the theoretical authorityisnt challenged which has installed the divi-

sion in the rst place. It offers a very seriousand seductive form of applied theoretical andepistemic critique, which by denying things inthemselves is always right. It is a dependencytheory of things, an idea, where things them-selves disappear because they depend on onlyone thing, the human act. Such a metaphy-sics of things having two worlds, one world of

mere appearance, and the other world com-pact of ultimate substantial fact (WHITEHEAD,1978, p. 152) had tremendous effects on thegeneral history of a highly normative conceptof cosmopolitanism which was led to balancethe world upon thought (ibid, p. 151). It isthe most elegant and thoughtful philosophicalidea causing a critical, social constructionist

perspective on humans and things coming intoexistence. But one may ask: What is strikingabout its attractiveness? It performs a viciousregress whereby the construction of objects isessentially a process of understanding whe-reby in understanding, what is understood isanalysed, insofar as it is understood (WHI-

TEHEAD, 1978, p. 153). Social constructio-nists will rework Kants idea and will arguethat what is understood may vary of how itis constructed at different places and/or in di-fferent times. This novel idea, then, addressesthe problems of an altogether different sphereof reality: society.14Whereas for critical philo-

14Durkheimians would assert that 'society' is also more com-plex than the 'individual nature' that let it emerge.

sophy it is the human, it is for cosmopolitansociology the social or society that functionas global, universal explanatory devices toconceive and describe the non-social and non--human.

8 Agency without actors?

Kant already saw that a cosmopolitan ri-ght, which is thought to connect and civilizethe Globe, couldnt be achieved without non--human entities. For Kant, technologies andanimals such as money, ship and camel (camelas the ship of the desert) made a globalcosmopolitan constitution possible in the rst

place. Money, ship and camel are relating peo-

ple and places; they create a common sphereof action, travel and exchange which couldntbe associated by humans only (KANT, [1795]1983, p. 118). Once we are able to share theGlobe with the help of non-humans, it appearsnecessary that all mobile strangers that arriveon foreign land should have the right of hos-pitality, i.e. the right notbe treated hostile; it

demands to respect a global visiting right, i.e.the right of the Other to collectively own thenite surface of the earth. If we globally va-lue the right of hospitality, humanity is comingcloser to a cosmopolitan constitution that maybring about the possibility of perpetual peace.Kant was also very much aware that econo-mic globalisation unleashes the non hospitableconduct of trading states affecting inequalities,adversities, conicts, slavery and war.15 It is,

15 Interestingly, Kant argued that the globalised world of histime makes it possible 'to feel' the violation of hospitality atoneplace from everywhere on the globe. Consequently, theideal of a cosmopolitan constitution is not a phantasmago-ria but a necessary, even a natural supplement to given laws(KANT, [1795], 1983, p. 300). However, the crucial impor-tance of his 'feelings' as 'forces of thought' (STENGERS, 2010)

did not lead Kant to any hesitation concerning his theory ofunderstanding, objects and cosmopolitanism. Cosmopolitics,


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the horse, so Kant, which can be consideredthe rst essential animal tool of war (KANT,

[1795], 1983, p. 121). Hence, although theworld Kant is experiencing is completely chan-ging and rests upon the creative associationwith non-humans that either stabilize perpe-tual peace between humans (ship, camel andmoney) or engage in war (horse), his theoreti-calposition does not allow conceiving non-hu-

mans as righteous actors. Kants critique doesnot enable non-humans to act as mediators,to borrow a notion form Actor-Network-Theory(cf. LATOUR, 2005). Mediators not only trans-port but transform the cosmos of what is tobe understood as the human social [mankind].Rather, non-humans remain mere intermedia-ries of human nature they are nothing but

transporters of human nature. Non-humansfull a practical role to set in place the rea-lities of cosmopolitan society, which theoreti-cally is nevertheless made by and for humans.It is due to the nal step that reason took, so

Kants Speculative Beginning of Human His-tory, that man/kind is able conceive him/itself

[...] altogether beyond any community withanimals, [...] which he now no longer regar-ded as his fellows in creation, but as subjectto his will as means and toolsfor achievinghis own chosen objectives. This picture ofthings includes [...] the thought of its con-trary, namely, that he may not speak in thisway to any manbut must regard all men asequal recipients of natures gifts (ibid, p. 52-

3; Highlighted by MS).

The way Kant relates the scientic proof of

the humanness of humans with the Christianhistory of creation is crucial in understandingKants enlightenment as a most profound re-

as contemplated here, suggest the central importance of 'feel-

ings' or 'concernedness' whereby 'understanding is a specialform of it' (WHITEHEAD, 1978, p. 153).

ligion of modernity (cf. SCHILLMEIER, 2010)that will colonise social and political thought.16Cosmopolitan agency is mans own ability toemancipate from his/her self-fabricated imma-turity in order to resistthat others to establishthemselves as their guardians(KANT, [1784],1983, p. 41). Resistance necessarily includesthe mastery of reason over impulses such asthe instinct for sex and related objects of the

senses (KANT, [1786], 1983, p. 51).Kants cosmopolitan can be seen as a con-ceptual persona (DELEUZE; GUATTARI, 1994)of a highly powerful, modernist political gu-re. As the signet of natures progress, mansmaturity symbolizes the true end of natu-re [Zweck der Natur] (KANT, [1786], 1983,p. 52). Like in the Bible, it is the standing,

speaking and thinking man that is cosmo-politan. Like Adam and Eve, the cosmopolitanhas secured himself from predators and anyother natural dangers (KANT, 1983, p. 49-50).Still, it is the animal nature which annoysthe practical men; and it is the different noi-ses and sounds of the thoughtless man andchildren that annoys the thinking man of the

commonwealth (ibid, p. 50). Hence, contraryto cosmopolitics as advocated here, for whichthe object, the nonhuman, the other are theforces for thought (STENGERS, 2010a, b) dueto the subjects concernedness for the other,for cosmopolitanism, the non-human other,who/which is everything and everybody diver-

ging from the standing, speaking and thinkinghuman being, is either the product of thoughtorthoughts endangerment. In practical termsthe non-human other is either mere means ofhumans end or compulsive.

16This is the trick: You don't have to be a religious 'believer' to

believe in it, since what is understood/believed in as 'human'is authorized by theory.


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9 Cosmopolitanism, oedagogy and

the lures of Thinking Big

Kants cosmopolitanism is the effect ofthinking big as a philosopher [KANT, 1784],whoh as investigated universal qualities con-cerning the question of What is the Human-ness of the Human?. After the interrogatedthe fact has been proven entirely human, apolitical programme, a social and cultural pe-dagogy of cosmopolitanism has been installedto teach, learn about and practice human na-

ture. According to Whitehead (1967, p. 200),the region [of humanity, MS] with its Laws ofNature is a synonym for the enduring subs-tance with its Essential Character [Reason,

MS]. Hence, Kants philosophy is interested inlearning (and teaching) about the region ofhuman being, a region that is meant to namethe space of humanity that practices and ins-titutionalizes human agency. Such a space oftaught and learned human agency Kant callscosmopolitanism.

In his book on Kant, Heidegger (1987, p.

56) notes that learning is taking notice of whatthings in general are. Interestingly, so Heideg-ger, the knowledge gained by learning is whatwe already know viz. have, otherwise we wouldnot be able to hear them in the rst place. To

learn what we already have/know, also meansto learn regardlessthe objects from which wemay create our knowledge (ibid, p. 58). Thus,

Kant was interested in teaching what might becalled the mathematics of humanity, a ge-neral pedagogy of human self-referentiality,a teaching of learning about ourselves beinghuman. What makes the symmetry of learningand teaching so seductive and powerful is, thathis argument is about the application of a uni-versal idea, which as already noted above is circular in style (HEIDEGGER, ibid): For

Kant, universal laws of experience are meantto proofthe explanation of the possibility of theexperience of objects (ibid). Hence, that Kantsbespeaks cosmopolitan agency to humansonly is very much embedded in a modernisticscientic belief system that is meant to solely

found self-explicableand thus reasonable the analysis and constitution of general prin-ciplesand eternal and unchallengeable laws

([1787], 1998, p. AXII) of reason, of humannature.

10 Cosmopolitan objects of resis-

tance

Cosmopolitanism is resisting the dark world

of the non-human. However, the Kantian ob-jects that have to be resisted are no objectsthat exhibit the alienating or coercive go-vernance of an external power. According toKant, it is due to our natural progress in re-ason that we have arrived at a stage wherewe humans know precisely well that we dealwith our self-made, i.e.humanproblems anddangers. Hence, what is at stake is our humanmaturity which remains highly immature ifwe remain too awed, lazy and cowardice to ta-ckle and question the self-imposed, common,mechanical or objectied forms of rationality

and belief systems, be it institutionalized rules,technological systems or expert-knowledge.

Kant stresses:

Immaturity is the inability to use ones un-derstanding without guidance from another.This immaturity is self-imposed when itscause lies not in lack of understanding, butin lack of resolve and courage to use it wi-thout guidance from another. Sapere Aude![dare to know] Have courage to use your

own understanding! that is the motto ofenlightenment (KANT, [1784], 1983, p. 41).


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Still, Kant laments, it remains rather dif-cult to do so, since it is so easy to be imma-ture, and the more so for the individual17: IfI have a book to serve as my understanding,a pastor to serve as my conscience, a physi-cian to determine my diet for me, and so on, Ineed not exert myself at all. I need not think,if only I can pay: others will readily undertakethe irksome work for me (ibid). It is more li-

kely that the public [Publicum] is able to free-ly perform self-enlightenment (ibid, p. 41). Ineffect, Kants cosmopolitanism applies his cri-tical ethos of delimiting the process of natureas a self-referential, rational and imaginativehuman construction [process of thought] bygiving it its societal region: the public sphe-re. Following Kant, due to his natural mettle,

every rational human being has the capacityto become cosmopolitan. However, to fully de-velop cosmopolitan capabilities, humans needmore than one human life to work on it. Unli-ke humans instinct, human reason needs tobe socially practiced and culturalized througheducation programmes, political governance,juridical laws, and public discourse. For Kant,

cosmopolitanism is the cultural and politicalmeans to exemplify and socialize the circula-rity of what it means to behuman. It framesthe moral regionof citizen[s] of a general hu-man state [ius cosmopoliticum] who has/havebeen although related emancipated andfreed from the status naturalis, the state ofpractised and threatening war (KANT, [1795],1983, p. 111).The better human nature is

17For Kant, in the life of individuals the natural turning pointfrom immatury to maturity is around the age of 16-17. Fromthat moment of natural maturity onwards, he still needs ap-proximately 10 years to gain full maturity in order to dealproperly with societal issues. For Kant the difference between'natural' and 'societal' maturity was a clear sign of different,self-referential logics of human nature: humanity as 'animalspecies' and 'moral species'. To be sure, in Kant's world onlythe male part seems to able to get mature in the rst place (cf.KANT, [1786], 1983, p. 54).

performed the more the cosmopolitan is ableto transcend and resist his animal nature. Thecosmopolitan society names the nal progress

of human nature which enables a public spacefor reading, thinking, and imagining.

It is quite clear who is generally able andwho is also likely to become a cosmopoli-tan actor in Kants cosmopolitan society, it isthe adult, healthy and well-educated scholar.

Kants proposed cosmopolitan mise en equi-valence, which outlines the beginning andend of human/kind, is precisely what the ideaof cosmopolitics tries to resist. Equivalence,as celebrated by Kant as the nal step taken

by reason, refers to a commonly shared cri-terion and suggests the compatibility of po-sitions. Cosmopolitics, on the other, troubles

the mise en equivalence and thereby concei-ves the cosmos as an operator of mise engalit, of egalization (cf. STENGERS, 2005,p. 995). The world becomes more interestingif we consider the non-human other, children,the disabled, the ill, the idiotic etc. as cosmo-political agencies that resist the apparent con-sensus concerning the (cosmopolitan) present.

Cosmopolitical sociology as advocated here,argues that cosmopolitanism is only one pos-sible way, and not theposition to address therelationship between humans and things. Forcosmopolitics, human-nonhuman relations re-fer the very becoming and multiplication of as-sociations that constantly enforce questioningwhat the human or/and societies are. Such aconcern as Isabelle Stengers (2005, p. 994)would say enables to slow down reasoningand create an opportunity to arouse a slightlydifferent awareness of the problems and situa-tions mobilizing us. Cosmopolitics spares timeto resist the present and turns our concern to-wards realities to be-come.


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Submetido para avaliao em 24 de janeiro de 2013.

Aprovado para publicao em 22 de abril de 2013.

Michael Schillmeier

Institut fr Soziologie, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitt Mnchen, Munique, Alemanh.E-mail: [email protected]

realidades para virem-a-ser: sobre cosmopolíticas

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