In the previous chapter, I considered dominant responses to trauma and contrasted Rosean inaugurated mourning with melancholic alternatives. In this chapter, I explore theoretical responses to the mundane, everyday experiences of exclusion and difference. I argue that Rose's aporetic universalism offers an important alternative to dominant discourses about difference, refusing reification of universality or particularity, in favour of a difficult negotiation of the middle.

One of the legacies of the Enlightenment is a cosmopolitan sensibility that sets its face against boundaries that would exclude and suppress the Other. In its liberal incarnation, cosmopolitanism insists that individuals have rights by virtue of being human, rather than by virtue of citizenship of any particular state. The liberal rights regime (and associated interventions in the name of rights) is perhaps the strongest expression of this type of cosmopolitanism. However, this drive towards (abstract) universality as the remedy for oppression risks homogeneity and further suppression of the Other in the pursuit of equality. In this chapter, I refer to this problem as the cosmopolitan dilemma: the situation whereby the emancipatory impulse towards universal cosmopolitanism values (rights and justice for all) fosters further marginalisation of the Other, as difference is sidelined by equality. Against Enlightenment suppression of particularity, postmodern thinkers foster a celebration of alterity and difference.