Announcing a new Telos-Paul Piccone Institute webinar series, “China Keywords,” beginning Thursday, March 21, at 10 a.m. Eastern Time.
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 Tipping our hat to Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, by Raymond Williams, the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute announces its newest webinar series: “China Keywords.” Each webinar will introduce and explore a single concept essential for understanding contemporary Chinese social and political theory. The series will illuminate these concepts with an eye toward non-specialists in the West, while also addressing deep contestations of interest to experts in the field. “China Keywords” is part of TPPI's larger Telos China Initiative.
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By Telos Press · Monday, March 20, 2023 In today’s episode of the Telos Press Podcast, David Pan talks with Eric Hendriks-Kim about his article “The Polemics of China’s Counter Cosmopolitanism,” from Telos 201 (Winter 2022). An excerpt of the article appears here. In their conversation they discuss the impetus behind the current proliferation of Chinese theories of cosmopolitanism; how these new ideas about cosmopolitanism fit into a history of anti-Western forms of universalism in various parts of the world; the idea of tianxia, its meaning and history, and how it is used today; how Jiang Shigong’s idea of socialism with Chinese characteristics differs from the theories based on the idea of tianxia; how Jin Huimin conceives of the relationship between universalism and particularity; the relationship of these Chinese notions of cosmopolitanism to Western notions of cosmopolitanism; and whether any of these conceptions escape from an imperialist perspective. If your university has an online subscription to Telos, you can read the full article at the Telos Online website. For non-subscribers, learn how your university can begin a subscription to Telos at our library recommendation page. Print copies of Telos 201 are available for purchase in our online store.
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By David Pan · Friday, November 10, 2017 David Pan’s “Cosmopolitanism, Tianxia, and Walter Benjamin’s ‘The Task of the Translator'” appears in Telos 180 (Fall 2017), a special issue on Cosmopolitanism and China. Read the full article at the Telos Online website, or purchase a print copy of the issue in our online store. Individual subscriptions to Telos are now available in both print and online formats.
As a term, cosmopolitanism defies simple understanding. Already in its earliest formulation, attributed to the ancient Greek Cynic Diogenes, the merging of cosmos and polite to mean “citizen of the world” had a paradoxical meaning, imagining both local belonging as a citizen and lack of a specific place in the world. If the Cynics’ notion of cosmopolitanism arises out of a rejection of conventions in general rather than the embracing of a world system, they were left in an empty space between locality and universality. This tension between belonging and universality continues into the current discussion of cosmopolitanism as a term that spans political and cultural discussions. While the modern cosmopolitan political project seeks to lay out a common institutional framework for human society, the accompanying cultural project in fact works against such unity by seeking to promote the recognition and toleration of cultural differences.
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