Abstract
This essay evaluates the contribution that sentimentality might make to cosmopolitan practices in contemporary life. In particular, it considers how the legacy of feminized sentimental fiction informs twenty-first-century rhetoric on the Internet. The essay examines how the person-to-person microlending Web site Kiva fosters attachments with distant others through the illusion of intimacy that reshapes the global into an emotionally manageable size. This sentimental promise of a small world is both what enables and what haunts a cosmopolitan sense of responsibility to others.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 269-292 |
| Journal | Public Culture |
| Volume | 21 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2009 |