Freedom of the Border. Paul Scheffer

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СКАЧАТЬ can be summed up quite simply, based on the above. On the one hand we have underestimated the fact that in a world that is growing smaller, urban conflicts may become more intense. On the other hand we have failed to see clearly enough that in a world that is growing smaller, geopolitical conflicts may become more fierce. Once we recognize both these things, we discover the significance of borders, which help to sustain an open society.

      We often hear people expressing concern about the borders of freedom. Here I want to lay the emphasis on the freedom of the border. In order to develop freedom to the full, liberal societies need to defend themselves against illiberal attitudes, both in domestic politics and in foreign policy. These are considerations that contribute to a re-evaluation of borders in a time of globalization.

      Contemporary philosophers – such as Sloterdijk, Bauman and Debray – investigate in ways of their own a world in which openness and identity are increasingly in opposition. We need to learn to deal with the tension between the two, a tension that is part and parcel of any lively democracy. An open society cannot exist if there is no middle ground. Pleas for open borders and pleas for closed borders are increasingly at odds, which does not bode well.

      Yet it is not easy to navigate between a poorly understood cosmopolitanism and a new protectionism. Italian novelist and cultural critic Alessandro Baricco detects a change in our emotional world. He concludes that individuals have more scope than ever and regards this mass individualism as progress, even though it is at risk of deteriorating into mass egotism. The ultimate outcome is positive. Masses no longer cluster together over the long term. Nothing sticks.

Baricco believes we are done with the slowness of the twentieth century, which as he sees it caused countless disasters. ‘Everything that has need of the steadfastness of immobility ultimately gets a twentieth-century stench and later a vaguely ominous sound as well.’¹⁸ He sums up the worldview that changes reality as follows: ‘Boycott borders, tear down all walls, set up one open space in which everything must circulate. Demonize immobility.’¹⁹

      In this borderless flux, markets and morality reinforce each other. Commerce naturally favours the removal of obstacles. Regulations of any kind are experienced as impediments. Morality too wants to reach beyond borders; human rights are valid everywhere and without limit. Hence businesspeople and idealists speak the same borderless language. Here all walls are indeed torn down: this change can easily turn against the social contract, which after all takes shape within borders.

      It is beyond dispute that cultures cannot develop in isolation, but freedom can come to grief in a borderless world. Mobility can increase only if there are enough people who feel a bond with a place. In fluid circumstances everything dissolves. Why would this not apply to freedom? The greatest challenge is to ensure that the mobility characteristic of our time can be reconciled with citizens’ rights.

      In what follows we will look in more detail at the world inhabited by the average citizen. It will become clear once again that globalization has a wide range of consequences. Along with mingling and enrichment we see alienation and inequality. If these fault lines become even more firmly fixed within our societies, then it’s clear where most people will end up: on the side not of cosmopolitanism but of nationalism.

Notes

      1  1 Peter Sloterdijk, Im Weltinnenraum des Kapitals, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 2005, p. 15.

      2  2 See Peter Sloterdijk, Sphären II, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1999.

      3  3 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or On Education, transl. Allan Bloom, New York, Basic Books, 1979, p. 39 (originally published as Émile, ou De l’éducation, Paris, 1762).

      4  4 Zygmunt Bauman, Culture in a Liquid Modern World, transl. Lydia Bauman, Cambridge, Polity, 2011, p. 45.

      5  5 Ibid., p. 46.

      6  6 Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, as cited in ‘De nieuwe directeur van Witte de With weet nu al dat ze kritiek gaat krijgen’, de Volkskrant, 7 May 2018. See also Paul Scheffer, ‘Dat waren de namen’, NRC Handelsblad, 16 May 2018; and Gloria Wekker, White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race, Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 2016.

      7  7 James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, in Collected Essays, New York, Library of America, 1998, p. 342 (originally published in New York, 1963).

      8  8 Ibid., p. 340.

      9  9 See Régis Debray, Éloge des frontières, Paris, Gallimard, 2010.

      10 10 See Michel Foucher, L’obsession des frontières, Paris, Perrin, 2007, pp. 115–16.

      11 11 Ibid., p. 123.

      12 12 See Debray, Éloge des frontières, p. 91.

      13 13 Cited in Michel Foucher, Le retour des frontiers, Paris, CNRS, 2016, p. 36; cited in English translation in Mikheil Saakashvili, ‘Moscow’s Plan is to Redraw the Map of Europe’, Financial Times, 27 August 2008.

      14 14 John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, New York, W. W. Norton, 2001, p. 361.

      15 15 Ibid., p. 53.

      16 16 Ibid., p. 368.

      17 17 Joschka Fischer, ‘The Overstretched West’, Project Syndicate, 26 August 2014.

      18 18 Alessandro Baricco, The Game, Turin, Einaudi, 2018, p. 77. English by the translator.

      19 19 Ibid., p. 75.

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