Last week I attended a conference organized by the UAB under the title “The border, an unavoidable concept?” Its objective was to reflect about the myth of Europe without borders, the persistence of identitarian borders (some of them recognized, some of them not), about the inconsistency of a Europe without internal borders but externally walled, and about the presence of this discussion in contemporary art and culture. From an identitarian perspective, the border is an unavoidable claim: to renounce to borders would imply to risk the identity.
From that same perspective, border are not intended as walls, but rather conceived as political-administrative boundaries for the sole purpose of defending a culture, in the broadest sense of it: culture not just based on tradition or a language, but also as a way of being together and managing the daily life. However, it seems very difficult, given the structure of societies in European countries nowadays, to design policies based on identity and at the same time be able to avoid exclusion and therefore the establishment of different levels of citizenship. Would not it be convenient to conceive such boundaries regardless of identities and with the only aim of ensuring effective political-administrative units to preserve the common good of those who constitute them?
In recent years, and more in recent months, we have been surprised by the loss of sovereignty that affected to the peripheral states of the European Union. We have complained of the “humiliation” represented by a directory led by the German government deciding about the economic policies of autonomous States. And the situation is not only humiliating, but dramatic, because these policies seriously education, culture, health and social system policies. This humiliation could be regarded as a reproduction of the one suffered by other territories whose borders where not recognized by the same States that now are suffering an attack to their sovereignty. But the problem is not that Germany, supported by other northern countries, dictates the policies of the southern, subjecting them to a different culture, the true problem is that the markets (ie, large fortunes, banks and managers investment funds that claim a non-democratic representation of the savers) are practicing a dispossession of wealth and rights to people in many States (considered until now “developed”), and they are doing that with the support of governments and institutions that were supposed to defend the common good of citizens and seek the extension of a model of protection and rights on which was built the European project.
If aggression comes no longer from a State with recognized borders against another State equally with recognized borders, but from a brutal amorphous and deprived of identity economic power, against citizens with divers traditions and cultures: what kind of borders would be effective? What would be the scale of such borders? And what type of fortification would be necessary to secure them? The response of Icelandic citizens could set an example. But if we move that to the European level, a return to the national closure would not be enough: we would have to imagine the articulation of people and territories in small-scale entities, large rural districts and medium urban districts, which were added to each other, respecting their own laws and their own currencies, and sharing some other laws and other currencies, so many as levels in which economic exchanges and political articulations happened, thus avoiding the creation of supranational powers that tried to impose their wills to individuals democratically organized. A dream? Probably the market’s servers would not be as condescending as they were with that island inhabited by about three hundred thousand people and separated from the mainland by 970 miles of ocean.
In his Dialogues of fugitives, Bertolt Brecht, in exile from Nazi Germany and in transit through different countries in Europe, wrote this text to be said by one of his characters: “Switzerland is a country famous for there you can be free. On condition that you were a tourist.” Indeed, tourists, in contrast to the exiles and immigrants, do not suffer the experience of the border. They are free, at the cost of accepting non-membership and declining social and political responsibility. The false freedom of the tourist is very tempting. But the price of that freedom is the ignorance of the suffering of others and the effective loss of rights. Perhaps the problem is that Europe pretended to be like Switzerland. But Switzerland has refused to join the EU. Is it because the Swiss know that the planet does not bear so many tourists, and that maintaining an exclusive tourism is the condition of its particular freedom? Tourists cannot live without borders. The borders ensure the existence of different human landscapes, cultural diversity, divers consume experiences. The borders allow tourists to come and go: see, enjoy and return to where their properties guarantee their expenses. But what would happen if in the middle of the trip the tourists discover that their savings are gone, that their wealth was fictitious and that they have no home to return to?
The dream of a world of free movement for tourists could be used to justify the existence of identity borders. Its function would be to maintain cultural diversity, to make possible the international distinction of a given territory. This distinction may increase the wealth of their citizens and give them the chance to be better tourists. The problem is that the tourism model is something like a friendly, popular and decentralized version of the colonial model. It is based on an acceptance of different degrees of rights and belonging. Why tourists visiting a poor country do not feel responsible for the lack of rights of others? They think: “it’s their problem, in my country we would not permit this, I help them spending my money here, they must learn from us.” Why tourists visiting a richer country feel fortunate to see the other’s treasures and admire the display of good management around without questioning how such accumulation of tangible and intangible goods happened? It is true that some “poor” tourists rebel and murmur: “Here is everything they stole.” And some “rich” tourists also rebel and try to influence the public opinion back in their countries or affiliate themselves with NGOs. However, very few would question the border, the original distinction.
The political border is the result of practical application of a metaphorical activity. We think of borders because we are body. We think the body as container. And the territory as a container of bodies. But there is no fundament for the border beyond our physical condition. There is no transcendental foundation of the border. All borders come out an act of violence, although violence is subsequently forgotten and borders stand as security guarantees. The establishment of borders follows a pattern similar to the establishment of property. It is true that some borders are necessary to prevent attacks and brutal slaughter. Although such attacks would not occur if previously borders had not been established defining territories after identitarian constructions.
What entitles a group the exclusivity to manage a territory and organize coexistence according to certain laws? The claim of superior intelligence (which is demonstrated by force) explain that a group pretend to assume the administration of a territory for the benefit of all (the colonial pattern), but would not justify the dispossession of others (the imperialist pattern). What justifies the dispossession and exclusion of others? Only the conviction that the distinction is transcendental. Transcendental identity has traditionally been based on religion, hence the alliance of political and military power with the ecclesiastical hierarchy: the powerful felt more comfortable justifying his power on religion than exhibiting a cynic attitude. In the last hundred years, economic power has considered more practical a different transcendental justification: the one based on the reification of racial, linguistic or cultural difference. Both modes of transcendence, religious and cultural, continue, however, working together in various ways.
Deprived of a transcendental justification, borders would become administrative boundaries and identity would cease to be considered as a barrier. Many identitarian boundaries would be discovered as masking real economic boundaries. What is disgusting about the walls (Mexico, Ceuta, Palestine) is that they make visible the hypocrisy of an obsolet concept of border. However, in recent years we witnessed the increasing construction of protective barriers, like shields superimposed to the skin of the States to prevent the aggression of the so-called new barbarians. These new shells are based on attempts of new identity constructions: the West versus everything else, Christianity versus everything else, Democracy versus everything else. And local versions of this: Europe versus everything else, Central Europe versus everything else, developed Anglo-Saxon countries versus everything else. The enemy cannot be defined, or is only circumstantially defined. Eventually, some actions helped to face the enemy: this happened when Al-Qaeda provided a new version of the fight between the Angel and Satan through the faces of Bush and Bin Laden, a perverse synecdoche of a fictional war between civilizations. The defense of the external border of the Empire set for the moment was a great distraction about the transnational oligarchies‘ invisible conquests and the implementation of systematic and transnational dispossession project.
The identitarian borders do not defend us from foreign attacks. The new barbarians are not residents in other territories, not immigrants; they are the representatives of so-called markets, where a shrinking group of families lie hidden, and those who represent them on bank’s boards and government councils. The walls are useless against them, national borders are also useless. We might give up thinking of erasing economic borders and maintaining cultural boundaries, but conversely, we might think of erase cultural borders to build only administrative boundaries, open to people and languages, but closed to speculation, fraudulent trading, the transit of goods produced by exploitation.
Aware of the metaphorical mechanism that justifies the border, we could project on the territory we have learned about our bodily being. Do not give more importance to the own culture that the one we give to the habits of the body. And take care of own culture with the same attention but with the same irrelevance with which we look after ourselves. Accept the uniqueness of one’s body with humility. And not to project on the social body the frustrations, denials and false claims that derive from the assertion of our life in the body. Acceptance of a complex egalitarianism would be just the beginning in the resistance against the brutal aggression of those who consider themselves elected and superior.
José A. Sanchez, Barcelona-Guimaraes-Madrid, March 2012
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