From Cosmopolitanism To Planetary Metonymy And Back : Some Rhetorical Considerations In World Literature

In this article I try to show that the issue of cosmopolitanism has always been connected to an universal project, most of the time conveyed in a metaphorical way. What we are facing today is a state of contiguity in a certain space, where the contingency is increas- ingly perceived. Tropologically speaking, we live now in a S/state that is partially met- onymic (contingent) and partially metaphorical (that is to say, founded on the myth of a common history). My proposal to apply the ecological concept of ‘Third landscape’ taken by Gilles Clément in that this model has the merit of considering the community in metonymical terms (contiguity and contingency) without forgetting the planetary utopian dimension (metaphorical myth of world as unity) inherent, after all, to any cosmopolitanism and to Literature.