Toward an Individualist Postcolonial Cosmopolitanism
| Author | Lucia M. Rafanelli |
| Published date | 01 June 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0305829820935520 |
| Date | 01 June 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Book Forum |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0305829820935520
Millennium: Journal of
International Studies
2020, Vol. 48(3) 360 –371
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0305829820935520
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1. Adom Getachew, Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019).
2. For her characterization of these diverse strands under the umbrella of ‘anticolonial national-
ism’, see Ibid., 2.
3. Ibid., 30–6.
4. Ibid., 32.
5. Ibid., 32.
Toward an Individualist
Postcolonial Cosmopolitanism
Lucia M. Rafanelli
The George Washington University, USA
Keywords
empire, postcolonialism, self-determination
In her powerful book, Adom Getachew reconstructs the anticolonial nationalism of sev-
eral Anglophone Black Atlantic thinkers.1 I will often refer to ‘anticolonial nationalism’
generally, but I mean more specifically the strands Getachew reconstructs.2 She says her
new understanding of anticolonial nationalism has implications for contemporary think-
ing about normative questions in global justice.3 However, Getachew focuses heavily on
the historical re-construction of anticolonial nationalism, spending much less space
developing her normative conclusions. Here, I sketch an alternative account – in some
ways consonant with and in some ways challenging Getachew’s account – of what anti-
colonial nationalism can teach us about contemporary controversies in global justice.
Getachew calls for the development of a ‘postcolonial cosmopolitanism that recenters
the problem of empire’.4 Unlike other contemporary cosmopolitanisms, she argues, the
postcolonial variety should be ‘less aimed at the limits of the nation-state and more con-
cerned with the ways that relations of hierarchy continue to create differentiated modes
of sovereignty and reproduce domination in the international sphere’.5 Opposition to
Corresponding author:
Lucia M. Rafanelli, The George Washington University, 2115 G St. NW, Monroe Hall, Washington, DC
20052, USA.
Email: lmrafanelli@gwu.edu
935520MIL0010.1177/0305829820935520Millennium: Journal of International StudiesRafanelli
research-article2020
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