The cosmopolitical Proposal
Isabelle Strengers

Cosmopolitical
Cos`mo*po*lit”ic*al
a. Having the character of a cosmopolite. [R.] –Hackluyt.

Cosmopolite
cos·mop·o·lite   
–noun
1. a person who is cosmopolitan in his or her ideas, life, etc.; citizen of the world.
2. an animal or plant of worldwide distribution.

Cosmopolitical Proposal
“How can we present a proposal intended not to say what  is, or what ought to be, but to provoke thought, a proposal that requires no other verification than the way in which it is able to ‘slow down’ reasoning and create an opportunity to arouse a slightly different awareness of the problems and situations mobilizing us”.

“The proposal thus corresponds to a form of self-regulation but has the advantage of presenting the “self” as an issue, of giving its full significance to the unknown element of the question: What would the researcher decide “on his/her own” if that “his/herself” were actively shed of the kinds of protection that current decisions seem to need”.

 Ethos_ the way of behaving, peculiar to a being.
Oikos_ the habitat of that being.

To act in a cosmopolitical manner in relation to political ecology is to remove any preconceptions in relation to a given issue, changing the states role, and to resist engaging with anything which transcends the issue in its concrete environment.
The purpose of the cosmopolitical proposal is to create a utopian vision [heterotopia], or a vision of the future which does not transcend issues of our current oikos, but rather one that identifies them. The cosmopolitical proposal could be considered as a methodology for creating a heterotopia, in that “it proposes an interpretation that indicates how a transformation could take place that leaves no one unaffected; in other words, it calls into question all the ‘one would just need to’ statements that denote the over-simplistic victory of good over evil”.
The cosmopolitical proposal is a theory of linked networks within the world, and the knowledge that these points in the network do no function independent of each other, which could be a consideration in order to promote question within the proposal.
The purpose of the cosmopolitical proposal, as stated in the very first paragraph of the essay is to, “…present a proposal intended not to say what is, or what ought to be, but to provoke thought, a proposal that requires no other verification than the way in which it is able to ‘slow down’ reasoning and create an opportunity to arouse a slightly different awareness of the problems and situations mobilizing us”.
It would appear that the cosmopolitical proposal is not merely a methodology for reaching a goal, it certainly is not the goal itself, it is not a utopian vision which dismisses current issues, but a proposal which is intended to promote critical thought, and the questioning of things from different perspectives.

Luke Flanagan

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