Civil Society and the Globalisation of Locality between Latin America and Europe: Integration as a Case of Agonistic Cosmopolitics

Two aspects are addressed here of a critical perspective on issues of integration, in which the EU features as a model and a counterpart to South American processes: a) representations of cosmopolitan engagement in issues of development, rights and cultural identity; b) participation in attempts to promote alternative forms of global governance. Discourses of civil society activism and its global networks and participation in international forums thereby enact an agonistic cosmopolitics where Europe appears as both model and adversary. Derrida’s logic of exemplarity is introduced to illustrate this point, in contrast to intellectual responses from Latin America emphasising globally connected localities – i.e. reconstructions of traditional ideas and signs of new discourses of community, religion and cultural identity as political resources. Such globalised localisms reconfigure historically crystallised forms of “influence” of Europe on Latin America, problematise notions of cosmopolitanism, and contest representations of both identities and their historical links.