Through an examination of debates about cosmopolitanism and human rights, Cheah questions key ideas about what it means to be human, and reveals the flaws in claims about the imminent decline of the nation-state and the obsolescence of popular nationalism.

Introduction: Globalization and the Inhuman I. Critique of Cosmopolitan Reason 1. The Cosmopolitical--Today 2. Postnational Light 3. Given Culture: Rethinking Cosmopolitical Freedom in Transnationalism 4. Chinese Cosmopolitanism in Two Senses and Postcolonial National Memory II. Human Rights and the Inhuman 5. Posit(ion)ing Human Rights in the Current Global Conjuncture 6. "Bringing into the Home a Stranger Far More Foreign": Human Rights and the Global Trade in Domestic Labor 7. Humanity within the Field of Instrumentality Notes Index

Normative engagements with globalization have for the most part been dominated by debates surrounding cosmopolitanism and human rights. Ironically, few on any side of these debates have directly addressed the capitalist aspects of globalization; even those dedicated to global distributive justice often approach the topic as a moral issue, not a structural one. Pheng Cheah’s Inhuman Conditions: On Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights is a refreshing corrective to this central shortcoming of many normative approaches to globalization… Inhuman Conditions, written in lucid and accessible prose, is a welcome effort to bring together several schools of thought often considered to be at odds. A poststructuralist account of globalization that takes the structures of capitalism seriously, Inhuman Conditions represents an important contribution to normative political thought on cosmopolitanism and human rights.

Cheah argues that the two major theoretical approaches to globalization--cosmopolitanism and human rights--fail to apprehend globalization critically because they presuppose that expanding markets are a means through which the 'human' might finally be universally achieved and the instrumentalism of nationalism and economy transcended. Contrary to these views, Inhuman Conditions demonstrates, on the one hand, that the human is not the limit of processes of global capitalism, but rather that capitalism depends on the division between the inhuman and human to distribute harms and make sense--and cents--of this distribution internationally. It is a rare treat to find a text which functions at such a high conceptual level even as this conceptual rigor and brilliance is brought to bear on social problems of pressing and vital contemporary importance. -- Elizabeth Povinelli, Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University Cheah argues for the continuing utopian potential of anti- and post-colonial nationalism. His assessment of the potential of cosmopolitanism is tempered with appreciation for the nation, in all its contaminated ideals. He offers a distinctive blend of attention to philosophy and political economy. This is an important book. It will have a place of pride on thinking about "the global." -- Anna Tsing, Professor of Anthropology, the University of California at Santa Cruz Cheah analyses brilliantly the relevance of national thought and human rights for projects of liberation in today's globalized world. -- Michael Hardt, co-author of Empire and Multitude