Europe as an Advanced Point? European Identity and Its Limits

In the beginning of the nineties Jacques Derrida addressed, in a colloquium on “European Cultural Identity”, certain possibilities about the different paths the new Europe could take. The address, entitled “The Other Heading”, departed with some initial concerns about what constitutes European identity and its relations towards others. What is the basis for such an identity of Europe? Could Europe transform itself, depart from the old Europe towards a community open both within itself as towards its frontiers? This article will examine some of Derrida’s hopes for this new Europe, and the path Europe has gone since his stipulation. The short answer is quite disquieting. Since his address the EU has built higher and more impenetrable borders against its African neighbours and at the same time established itself as a technocratic institution distanced from its people. We have also witnessed a rise of right-wing extremism, which may very well be connected to this particular construction of European identity. Terms like “social tourism” and the “polish plumber” flourished in various national electoral debates, and even in the academia. No more than 1 ½ year ago the French immigrants had enough of it, but the resulting riots were for the most part labelled as non-political and fragmented – former French interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy, now President, labelled them as “racaille” – a rabble of youths. The response was even more segregation. The relationship towards the so called Other couldn’t have been more patronizing.

In his address Derrida identifies certain characteristics in the European identity, most notably its strive to be what he calls a “heading”, an advanced point, which both declares the telos of human civilization and Europe as the captain steering the world towards this final destination. Those are the key aspects of European identity as it has been, according to Derrida, however the picture soon becomes blurred as he examines the inherent contradictions within that claim. For the heading, far from being a well-defined objective, is actually empty, there is no final resting place for Europe or for any other cultural identity for that matter. For the (political) definition of Europe as a Heading always take place in an undecidable terrain and thereby forecloses other alternatives and other objectives. Thus there is always a possibility for an other heading, a change of destination or a change of captain; “the heading of the Other”, a possibility that finally could open up to an understanding of the “other of the heading”, i.e. a relationship that doesn’t take on the hierarchical form of a Heading. Derrida’s hopes for Europe consist in the heading’s double role, as he proclaims:

“And what if Europe were this: the opening onto a history for which the changing of the heading, the relation to the other heading or to the other of the heading, is experienced as always possible? An opening and a non-exclusion for which Europe would in some way be responsible?”
Jacques Derrida, 1992: 17

For to be a cultural community one must also be a heading, one must present oneself as a heading in order to define oneself. As post-structuralism has thought us, identity is never essential – it is never given naturally – but this lack of identity only makes us aspire towards it. This aspired telos/heading is what constitutes us Europeans as a partial cultural community. But for Derrida that positioning needn’t correspond to a distancing from the Other, but could very well be an understanding of them. Derrida reminds us that we cannot simply avoid aspire to be a heading, i.e. open ourselves up to the coming of anything, which could make the return of “the phantom of the worst” (Derrida, 1992: 18) possible, but at the same time not let that memory – that identity as a Heading – keep us from opening ourselves up towards a future that we have not yet identified, to the “other of the heading”. A future that is always “to-come” so to speak. That is the path Derrida identifies for Europe, though it has not yet been one that Europe has taken.

Despite the rather gloomy picture of Europe already presented in this article, there does however seem that some of Derrida’s hopes have come true. The constant enlargement of EU is an example of that, as the EU-commissioner for enlargement, Olli Rehn, recently reminded us at the World Economic Forum in Davos: Europe has no borders to its east, and is therefore not a geographical concept but a philosophical. As such, Rehn asserted, the EU has essentially open borders. This is of course in essence a valid proclamation, since every border originally is a social construction, but that needn’t entail that the philosophical EU has no borders. In fact those borders seem rather strict. The enlargement of the EU has unfortunately not been about an opening towards the Other, which is what Derrida wanted of us, but about the alteration of the Other into oneself, illustrated by the strict demands of assimilation put on its applicants, most notably in the case of Turkey’s inclusion. The European identity is very much marked by the old idea of Europe as an advanced point, steering the world into civilization while simultaneously distancing itself towards the Other.

That identity expresses itself in many different contexts, among others the EU’s increasing technocratic character, a problem not only because of the democratic deficiency entailed with it – through a separation with the people and a lack of transparency and accountability. It is also a problem connected to the relationship towards the Other. Chantal Mouffe calls this increasing technocracy a depoliticization of politics, which aspire to foreclose every internal and external difference in the name of consensus and rationality by “putting the stress on ‘neutral politics without adversaries’” (Stavrakakis, 2005: 79). This effort, which we today find especially in the “Third Way” politics of the political centre, is not only misleading – since it fails to deal with the limits through which identity is constructed – but it also makes, argues Stavrakakis, the construction of European identity frail and weak. Thereby it leads people to other political arenas without these tendencies, which could explain the proliferation of right-wing extremist discourses in Europe today, discourses that accentuate the relation towards the Other as a harsh separation. These discourses are in that sense easier to identify with than the dry Europe constructed by the EU. In continuation this is what makes the EU’s construction of Europe – characterized by consensus and neutrality – seen as a top-down political project producing not identification but alienation. The 1991 headline of the British tabloid The Sun echoed that alienation by simply reading: “Up yours Delors!” (editorial note: Jaques Delors, former president of the European Commission)

“Third Way” politics?

But while Mouffe and Stavrakakis expresses the borderless character of this consensual politics – portraying it as only producing identification with other more conflictual discourses, such as right-wing extremism – Derrida makes an understanding of the link between it and an even greater antagonism possible, seeing them as strictly interrelated. By constructing a cultural identity around the homogeneity of consensus and deliberative rationality –to define oneself as a complete Heading in itself, and thereby closing off oneself against the always present other Heading – is only to make that demarcation stricter and more impenetrable. It does not however make that border disappear in an (imagined) universality. Consensual democracy in that view leads to a more radical difference, not only to the people habituating Europe, but also to the people outside that territory and the states aspiring to get in. Either they integrate their Heading with that of Europe or they will be kept at a distance. Those left outside the limits of consensus are thus seen as a radical Other, a completely different Heading which needs to be either decapitated or kept at an extreme distance. Today, we can, unfortunately, witness both replies in Europe’s migration politics. First of all the Schengen Agreement has now produced what is popularly called “Fortress Europe” building walls around its geographical borders keeping immigrants at a safe distance. While it is easier than ever to travel within the confinements of Europe it is harder than ever to get in. According to a recent press review over 6000 people have died trying to cross the border into Europe since 1988, most of them in boats on the Mediterranean Sea. Nowhere can the relation between politics of homogeneity and an antagonistic outside be made more visible. But it is a relationship that the EU has tried to keep hidden, illustrated by the outsourcing of its borders to Africa. The frontiers separating us are now located not in Europe, but in various African states. The EU as a political entity is a stark contrast to the vision of Derrida, which portrayed a responsible heading as one that knows its borers, its limits and is self-reflexive in its relationship towards them. Instead this outsourcing well portrays Derrida’s argument that accentuating inner homogeneity coupled with the illusion of non-borders only constructs higher borders – even though they might be more invisible.

This radical demarcation between Europe and its frontiers is directly associated with the construction of Europe as an anamnesiac Heading, as a Heading that forecloses its own future in the remembrance of its imagined past, which invariably leads to an introvert looking cultural entity and a strict separation towards the Other. Depressingly, this is the path Europe has taken. But that does not entail that this path is unchangeable, quite the contrary I would say. There is always a possibility of changing Headings, for every cultural identity is in essence contingent in character, and therefore the opening up of European identity to the other of the heading always remains a possibility. It remains a promise stemming from the future. A promise about not only knowing the Other but of opening oneself up towards them. One could “therefore invent gestures, discourses, politico-institutional practices that inscribe the alliance of these two promises or contracts: the capital and the a-capital, the other of the capital” (Derrida, 1990: 44), that defines Europe as an entity but an entity whose definition is left unstipulated. That is why Derrida’s hopes for Europe, although more than 15 years old, are still valid, and his proclamations in need of constant repetition:

”Not only to look – in the way of research, analysis, knowledge, and philosophy – for what is already found outside Europe, but not to close off in advance a border, to the future, to the to-come [à venir] of the event to that which comes, which comes perhaps and perhaps comes from a different shore”
Jaques Derrida, 1992: 69

Claes Wrangel

References:

• Derrida, Jacques, 1992, “The Other Heading” in The Other Heading: Reflections on Today’s Europe, Bloomington, Indiana University Press
• Mouffe, Chantal, 2000, The Democratic Paradox, London, Verso
• Stavrakakis, Yannis, 2005, “Passions of Identification: Discourse, Enjoyment and European Identity” in Howarth & Torfing, Discourse Theory in European Politics, London, Palgrave Macmillan