8 Materiality and the Modern Cosmopolitan Novel
manifestations with its political and social concerns, Walkowitz
provides a highly valuable contribution to the field and has been an
important inspiration in the development of this book.
Another theorist working in what could definitively be labeled
the “sociopolitical” end of the field, and who has also been of con-
siderable value to this book, is David Harvey. His recent work,
Cosmopolitanism and the Geographies of Freedom , offers a philosoph-
ically insightful and sociologically attentive analysis of the concept’s
development since the Enlightenment era. Using a geographically
and materially anchored framework, Harvey examines two generic
stra ins of thought that have shaped contempora r y approaches to cos-
mopolitanism. The first takes its lead from Kant, who articulated an
idea of universal “brotherhood,” based upon an international para-
digm of “hospitable” nation states. In this model, cosmopolitanism
entails living by a “special contract of beneficence,” observed by a
federation of discrete but mutually hospitable nations.^21 A l t h o u g h
Harvey does not dismiss the nation state as a viable apparatus for
cosmopolitan and democratic political practice, he takes issue with
Kant’s postulation that it is a fixed unit of human identification and
belonging, which engenders certain typical characteristics among its
citizens, depending on physical location, geography, and climate.^22
Harvey then provides an overview of some of the ways Kant’s
essentialist fallacy (as he sees it) can be observed in other influen-
tial theorists, such as Martin Heidegger. An important component
in Heidegger’s philosophy is the concept of Dasein , which directly
translates into English as “presence” or “being there” and signifies a
self-conscious form of existence that humans are granted the ability
to recognize and nourish.^23 In this schema, humans can therefore
structure their lives and environments to reflect and nurture Dasein.
Like Kant, who identifies essential characteristics that are contingent
upon place, Heidegger considers human life (and our relationship
with Dasein ) to be determined by the characteristics associated with
peculiar geographical locations. He also believes that particular geo-
graphical places offer a more nourishing form of existence—what he
calls “dwelling.”^24 “Dwelling,” he writes elsewhere, “[... ] is the basic
character of Being in keeping with which mortals exist.”^25 One such
dwelling place is the Germanic Heimat in the Black Forest, a place