Barack Obama, the 2008 Presidential Election, and the New Cosmopolitanism: Figuring the Black Body

Obama's physical embodiment of what might be called "cosmopolitan blackness" also contributes to a current debate over the promises and dangers of a revitalized cosmopolitan social ethic. Since the mid 1990s a time period that overlaps with the publication of Obama's 1995 Dreams from My Father, a number of black and white intellectuals, cultural critics, literary scholars, sociologists, and philosophers have demonstrated an interest in revising older theories of ethical cosmopolitanism, or the recognition of shared human rights, in ways that will make it more responsive to local bonds and affiliations.