Is there a global common in the postcolonial world? Unfortunately, it seems all too easy to answer this question today: the global common is neither to be found in the old modern concept of universality - since it has proven culturally specific - nor in the normative equality of particular cultures that mutually recognize one another. Instead, it is to be found in the never-ending process of interacting and mixing cultural differences, a process we call cultural translation. This process has its own subject: a new homo duplex of our time, the one who produces, enjoys and theorizes this new common of a trans-national, global culture. At the same time, however, his or her political articulation follows the same old pattern of cultural particularity, in short, the concept of the nation-state. So the homo duplex makes politics out of what s/he culturally condemns. What s/he culturally adores is conversely of no political use whatsoever. To openly challenge this contradiction is probably the hardest task of our time.