The settler’s cosmopolitanism (cosmosettlerism): Fabián Flores Silva, ‘Kantian Cosmopolitanisms Encountering Isolated Indigenous Groups: Between Ambiguous Anti-colonialism and Risky Oversight’, Revista de ciencia política (Santiago), 45, 3, 2025 | settler colonial studies blog

The settler’s cosmopolitanism (cosmosettlerism): Fabián Flores Silva, ‘Kantian Cosmopolitanisms Encountering Isolated Indigenous Groups: Between Ambiguous Anti-colonialism and Risky Oversight’, Revista de ciencia política (Santiago), 45, 3, 2025

02Jan26

Abstract: This paper compares Kant’s cosmopolitan right with the Kantian-rooted cosmopolitan proposals of Seyla Benhabib and Jacques Derrida, assessing their ability to support South American isolated indigenous groups’ claims to reject external intrusion in their lands, as a way of counteracting damaging settler-colonialist dynamics. It argues that despite Kant’s cosmopolitan right, which includes a problematic racialized and teleological aspect that precludes understand it as a full anticolonial perspective, it primarily endorses non-state peoples with a right to reject external requests for hospitality. Conversely, the ethical commitments in Benhabib’s and Derrida’s cosmopolitan propositions for the sovereign states to accept external solicitations for hospitality not only neglects isolated indigenous claims but may unintendedly contribute to their physical and cultural destruction. The tension that emerges between Kant’s minimalist focus on international peace and the justice-oriented perspectives of contemporary Kantian thinkers underscores the need for cosmopolitan theories to more effectively engage with the struggles of indigenous peoples.

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