Perpetual War

Bruce Robbins is the Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. He is the author of Upward Mobility and the Common Good: Toward a Literary History of the Welfare State and Feeling Global: Internationalism in Distress, and a coeditor of Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling beyond the Nation and Immanuel Wallerstein and the Problem of the World: System, Scale, Culture, also published by Duke University Press.

• Acknowledgments viiIntroduction 11. Cosmopolitanism, New and Newer: Anthony Appiah 312. Noam Chomsky's Golden Rule 473. Blaming the System: Immanuel Wallerstein 674. The Sweatshop Sublime 935. Edward Said and Effort 1156. Intellectuals in Public, or Elsewhere 1377. War Without Belief: Louis Menand's The Metaphysical Club 1578. Comparative National Blaming: W. G. Sebald and the Bombing of Germany 173Notes 191Bibliography 221Index 231

"Apart from the significant contribution that Perpetual War will make to the literature on cosmopolitanism, it is a richly elaborated work of intellectual and cultural history in its own right. Bruce Robbins is a superb writer and critic, and his analyses are incisive, deeply informed, and refreshingly blunt. Perhaps because he has for so many years been thinking about the vicissitudes of political thought and feeling, and in particular about cosmopolitanism, Robbins has a quite unusual ability to zero in not only on the analytic but also the emotional or psychological core of his object of study. His deep and wide-ranging treatment of cosmopolitanism will advance debate on the topic immeasurably."-Amanda Anderson, author of The Powers of Distance: Cosmopolitanism and the Cultivation of Detachment "Over the past twenty years, no one has done more than Bruce Robbins to elaborate an ideal of cosmopolitanism that grapples productively with local attachments (including those of nationalism and patriotism) while aspiring toward a critical internationalism. In these rigorously scrupulous, relentlessly challenging essays, Robbins shows why that project is so important, and why intellectuals on the left need to defend the provisions of the social welfare state while promoting a supranational standard of international justice-a project that entails the difficult recognition that the domestic welfare state is also the international warfare state. Perpetual War is an exemplary attempt to come to terms with that recognition, and pursue its implications wherever they lead."-Michael BÉrubÉ, author of The Left at War “Robbins writes in the first person, displays a flare for personal anecdotes, and is not at all bashful about expressing his perplexities and uncertainties, all of which should make Perpetual War accessible to those who are challenged by the wealth of detail and insider talk Robbins brings to the case studies.” - David White (Left Eye on Books) “Accessibly written yet decidedly ambitious and provocative in its theoretical reach…. Robbins’s text is a timely intervention in debates on the political role of the intellectual in national and transnational contexts.” - Justin Izzo (College Literature) “At the root of the intellectual exercise… lies a profound disenchantment with the ‘old’ elitist formulations of cosmopolitan thought, informed by existential detachment from the core practices of national belonging and normative impulses ingrained with patriotic fervour, and an embrace of a more immediate ‘everyday’, and, therefore, more censorious ‘new’ modes of being in a world rife with economic injustices and exploitation, pathologies of global inequality, cultural and religious intolerance, militarism, and asymmetries of power, and the unredeemable ghosts of imperial zeal… Robbins dissects the vicissitudes of political action in the world of profound socio-cultural complexities and ever-shifting allegiances.” - Joanna Rozpedowski (Political Studies Review) “…Robbins’ erudition and interpretive finesse in Perpetual War are nothing short of mind-boggling…”  - Robin Truth Goodman (symploke) “Bruce Robbins is an earnest and sensitive contributor to the increasingly robust debate on global justice. . . . Robbins parlays culture-centered cosmopolitanism into a wise protopolitics while delivering the most discerning commentaries I have yet to read on the theorists whose work he does engage (including my own).” - David A. Hollinger (Common Knowledge) “[A] nicely argued, engaging volume. Those interested in the discussion of nationalism, internationalism, and ideas about war and ethics will find it rich with fascinating observations and insights.” - Anthony D'Agostino (Journal of American Studies)