2007:3). More recently, however, cosmopolitanism is conveniently linked with the
evolution of the Western Enlightenment and often associated with the theoretical
suppositions of Immanuel Kant. On this score, Gerard Delanty’s (2006: 26) account of
the history and the informing ideology of the concept will be useful:
Although the origins of cosmopolitanism lie in an essentially moral view of the individual as
having allegiances to the wider world, it was to acquire a political significance once it was
linked to peoplehood. The main tradition in modern cosmopolitan thought, which derives
from Immanuel Kant, sought to extend republican political philosophy into a wider and
essentially legal framework beyond political community extending beyond the community
into which one is born or lives. Cosmopolitanism thus became linked with the universalism of
modern western thought and with political designs aimed at world governance.Cosmopolitanism, viewed from this angle, cannot be separated from the imperialist
agenda that the Enlightenment produced both in terms of slavery and colonialism. The
desire to expand the horizon of allegiance beyond national boundaries definitely was of
great mercantile benefit to the West in the centuries-long expeditions into Africa and the
rest of the world. The returns have since consolidated the economies of the countries that
were actively involved in the cosmopolitan mission which did not only spread the often
hyped desirability of Western forms of democracy, but has also forced a reconfiguration
of spatial nationalism, pointing ultimately to the dimensions of imperialism as
transmutation of border-crossing into relocation for the domination of aborigines living in
other parts of the world in their distinctly racial and cultural contexts from Africa to
Asia, Canada to Australia.
Therefore, the disaffection with the nation state that cosmopolitanism puts forward in
order to celebrate some kind of homeliness in the world deserves careful scrutiny, just
like the other similarly configured abstractions. This is more so in view of the fact that
for the postcolonial world, the morality and teleology of western abstractions and other
forms of conceptual invention hardly redound to its development. The situation is
patently so because the history of western imperialism since the Enlightenment has more
often than not shown that every step of progress the West takes has always impacted
negatively on the rest of the world, especially Africa. On the strength of this observation,