First published for Political Thought Journal (December 2006). Konrad Adenauer Foundation-Skopje. NIK List.

The Necessary Violence of the Peacemaking Identity

Ana Pejcinova

Abstract:

The project of creation of a common European identity may proceed into two directions, by two accordant strategies of identity formation: geopolitical and temporal. The prior strategy is based on othering projected across the geopolitical boundaries. It is identical to the strategy of building national state identity, a solution to local problems which simultaneously creates larger scale problems. Geopolitical identity formation has been evaluated as far more conflict-prone and more violent than the temporal strategy of identity building. The latter takes its own past self, i.e. its temporally differentiated “I” for its Other. The new identity is formed by critical reflection upon one’s own past and is characterized by a perspective of continual inclusive opening and perfectability. While some leading minds warn against the negative consequences of a future geopolitical Europe and advocate self-reflective temporal strategy of identity formation, the latter’s aspects of incompletion and openness are not popularly attractive for the anxiety-ridden population of the fast changing Union. Unreflective propagation of geopolitically differentiated identity leads to externalization of European violence at its social margins and across the borders of the Union. The Macedonian position is analyzed as a propagation of the discourse of violence, an object of the European externalization and a subject of its own violent processes.

Keywords: Europe, identity, violence, geopolitics, externalization

In 1998, Ole Wæver developed the thesis of the European war past as a constitutive reference point for the formation of the post-war European identity and consequently, the identity of the European Union (EU) citizens. The theme of the missing European identity particularly intensified within the public space of debate following the loud non and nee to the European Constitution and the readings of the Eurobarometer, which, it suffices to say for beginning, consistently and for a while have been expressing acute fear from the new Europe among its citizens. In response to the obstacles which the economic-political project “Europe” met from within, Wæver’s idea was taken up by several authors; among them is Thomas Diez, on whose post-structural analysis of “The Others of Europe and the Return to Geopolitics” this article is partially based.

Here I will distinguish between temporal and geostrategic type of collective identity formation, and I will discern two trajectories of development of the European project beginning from the same reference point of Otherness - the European violent past. The first trajectory is Europe as it wants it to be, a peacemaking, self-reflective and self-critical entity; the second trajectory is Europe as it can happen again, an entity of which peacemaking may be reduced to pacification of its own territory, while its violence would be externalized, i.e. it would be projected at the margins of the society and across the geopolitical borders of the Union. By “violence,” I mean human potential for conflict ; this includes physical, economic, political and social violence, as well as the violence of unconcern, which consists of “letting others die.”

One symptomatic speech

Romano Prodi, in the speech given in Sarajevo on 4 April 2002, characterized Bosnian history as “a potted version of Europe’s own.” The main line of comparison in this speech lies in the Bosnian “confrontation, nationalism and extremism,” attitudes and representatives of which, he says, have no place in a united Europe: “European integration has allowed us to cast off (sic) this narrow mindset. We (sic) no longer see ourselves solely in terms of nationality, community or State…”

Prodi clearly distinguishes between “us” (the Europeans) and “you” (non-Europeans), ascribing conflict, nationalism and extremism to non-Europe, while peacemaking, supra-nationalism and moderation to Europe. However, Prodi does not speak of a Europe that already is, but of an imagined Europe which (perhaps) will be. Neither does he speak of a real Bosnia, but of one aspect of Bosnia isolated through the lenses of war (through different lenses, the comparison between Europe and Bosnia could have been in the shared history of multiculturalism and solidarity, par example). As in many cases, the speech says more about the speaker than about the adressant. It is precisely the speaker, the European as s/he would want to become, who is the subject of this article. Let us inquire into the tacit assumptions of this speech:

The key differentiation in this speaking discourse lies in the word “conflict,” and the implicit “violence,” as a potential for conflict. The discourse from which Prodi sees Europe and Bosnia is singular: it is the discourse of violence, which artificially divides the world into two parts: a violent (non-European) and a non-violent (European) part. This discourse, for Prodi, draws its legitimacy on the common history of violence, for Europe as if long past and removed forever, while for Bosnia as if recent, present and potentially future one. In a way, Prodi calls Bosnia to renounce its past and present of violence and to build a new peacemaking “I,” following the example of Europe.

And yet, by the very rhetorical act of such differentiation, the speaker supports the continuation of violence. The standard practice of reproduction of collective identities (ethnic, religious, national, supra-national, etc.), from a post-structuralist perspective, roots itself on the establishment of (at least) two subject positions: “us” and “them” (the Other). Conflicts are not a natural product of incompatible subject positions, but are a part of the (re)production of these positions, whose articulation reproduces the conflict, claim Diez, Stetter and Albert: “Conflicts, therefore, are accomplished through discourse.” From this perspective, the discourse from which Prodi speaks has passed a judgement prior to the speaker voicing it: that “you” equals “conflict” stems from the very act of saying “we” equals “peace.” The discourse which says, “Europe is peace, and you are not Europe,” tacitly treats the Others of Europe as a conflict potential.

Prodi’s speech, although he is not the voice of Europe and is less self-critical than many, is symptomatic of a wider process of the effort to form a European identity. This effort consists of othering (creating an Other), of the gesture of removing one’s own past and one’s difference from the “I,” (diachronically from the present, and synchronically in space), where both the past and the present difference are presumed as violent. Directly: “We used to be violent, we are not anymore, and we shall never return to violence.” Still, indirectly: “You, who are not us, are violent. In you we see ourselves in that shape which we want to remove from ourselves.” Or even: “In you we see what we do not want to see (now or anymore) in ourselves.” This gesture of demarcation of “I”/”us” as distancing from violence (one’s own or another’s) is violent by itself, in two manners: it is self-violent (it disables the speaker to recognize his/her own potential for conflict) and it is violent towards the Other (it ascribes and prescribes violence as an essential quality of the Other).

A geopolitical and temporal Other

Most frequently, post-structuralist theories of identity formation are based on differentiations between synchronic Otherness, where identity emerges as a product of summed up negative definitions (“I am what the Others are not.”). In political context, this is called also geopolitical othering, as the distance between the “us” and “you”/“them” is materialized in inter-state boundaries. Such Others of Europe can be the USA, Russia, Islamic countries, etc. The geopolitical type of othering is one of the key aspects in creating sovereign national identity and, consequently, nation state and state union. However, the act of establishment of a single-nation homogenous entity is doubly violent: it violently removes not only geopolitical entities, but also integral aspects of its own “I,” while repressing the heterogeneity within its own borders. The geopolitical boundaries further serve to forcefully maintain the artificial difference between the national “I’ and the Others outside.

Somewhat less explored socio-political phenomenon is the diachronic difference, where the collective identity is created by a negative definition of an earlier “I”, and constitutive principles of self-making are sought into what is opposite from the othered (old and discarded) “I.” In contrast to the geopolitical type of othering, Diez elaborates the concept of the temporal Other, the European own past as the most essential and beneficiary aspect of the construction of a European identity. Diez defines temporal othering as self-reflective: this does not represent another synchronic group as a threat, but the true threat is one’s own diachronic self, the “I” of the past.

Conflicting identity

Neither is the temporal othering relieved of self-violence: a milder form of violence is necessarily used to remove a coarser form. Thus, the European Union imposed internal sanctions against Austria in 1999, when the right Liberal Party (FPO), accused of racist agenda, created a coalition government. Still, without sanctions, and even without public debate, remain other member-countries which promote similar politics with racist taint (e.g. immigration or minorities, such as Denmark).

The self-reflective gesture of removing one’s violent past is yet more problematic. How much has Europe been really non-violent after the 2nd World War? From the military conflicts, one can name, for example, the French repression in Algiers in 1954 and 1962, the Irish, the Basque, and the French Corsican conflicts, or the recent conflicts in the French suburbs. Will the role of the United Kingdom in the invasion of Iraq, for example, be considered as a militant state aggression within ten years from now? Also, do we consider only conventional and civil war as violence, when the contemporary preferred forms of violence have changed into less costly forms (e.g. economical instead of physical destruction, secret military interventions and financial-logistical support to armed movements abroad, economic sanctions, cultural hegemony by means of control over the international media and the knowledge resources, monopoles over the flow of information… and, unfortunately, so on)?  The UK and France are in the first five countries in small arms export (after the USA, China and Russia); the European cities are among the final destinations of the global drug routes and among the main consumers of narcotics; as such, they are indirect initiators of violence elsewhere. Meanwhile, within the Union, racism alters into cultural xenophobia, multiculturalism is in crisis, and nationalist political platforms cyclically win the elections.

Violence, therefore, is still in Europe, although some of its conventional forms are in decline. Still, the imagined peacemaking identity of Europe and the un-appeasing reality represent a natural and necessarily developmental tension between what is and what should be. Diez evaluates the temporal form of identity formation as less violent, less antagonistic or exclusionary than the usual geopolitical and cultural form of othering, because of the more open “I” it requires, and due to the circular act of self-creation it produces („what I create today as “me”, I shall critically examine tomorrow, I shall strive to improve it and, consequently, the “I” of tomorrow will be a perfected, differentiated version of my present”). This is Europe which is not, but Europe which can be, the wished for Europe of Diez, Wæver and other leading minds.

Lukewarm barometer

The leading minds, however, are not the voting body of the Union. The changeability and the openness of the new EU identity advocated by the peacemaking thinkers seem to be something which creates fear among the ordinary EU citizens. The relative stability and the enclosure offered by the national identity, especially in periods of crisis and uncertainty, becomes emotionally more attractive than the instability of the yet non-existent, uncontrolled and unknown identity of the imagined Europe.

The support of the Union membership in the period 1995-2006 steadily varies above the 51-52% in favour, with a slight tendency of increase. The latest polls of the Eurobarometer point out to citizens’ “near-zero knowledge” of other member states and of the Union itself, as well as to perceptible fear for one’s own future within the Union. Positive expectations are mainly “defensive,” that is, stated in a form “to keep what one has.” The general climate is “marked by uncertainty and by some very deep worries.“ Negative perceptions relate to the mistrust toward the political elites whose product the Union is considered to be, especially in its enlarged version; absence of direct democracy and decrease of citizens’ influence on collective decisions; mistrust that the Union would look after its citizens so well as the national government would, subject to elections; fear of economic worsening, dissolution of the social protection systems and the social tissue, weakening of the national identity and loss of referential values and norms.

Fear of the unknown, of the new and the foreign, in this period is something that connects the old and the new members of the Union. Although the Eurobarometer perhaps describes a natural contraction coming after a rapid expansion, this still may be speaking of a different desired Europe, with a potential to be less chilling for its own citizens, popularly more attractive than the Europe of Diez: a geopolitically built state union, with impenetrable borders, defensive in regard to its Others, created as an aggregate of “hard” and safe national identities.

Externalization of violence

It can be noted that today’s Europe is caught within a double movement: a self-reflective renouncement of militarized violence as a conflict-solving tool, and a non-reflective “externalization of violence.” This new term needs elaboration:

By externalization of violence I understand a process of transfer of violent activities (of military, economic, political, cultural, ecological and “unconcerned” character) in two directions: on one side, at the margins of the community within the Union, and on the other side, over the borders of the Union. This includes externalization of physical violence (e.g. clandestine military operations, economic profiting on wars abroad, sponsorship of foreign armed factions), externalization of economic violence (e.g. off-shore banking and use of tax havens, use of underage and cheap labour force without social protection), externalization of irrationality (e.g. extremism, religious and ethnic violence) and immorality (e.g. sex-tourism). By externalization I do not mean simply export of a product or a practice, but also the export of the discourse of violence, of the perception of the possibility and illegitimacy of violent behaviour, at the margins of the society and across the territorial borders. This possibility (and a priori suspicion of practice) is thus ascribed exclusively to the Others, while one’s own subject position is non-reflectively treated as violence-free, and therefore responsibility-free.

A collective identity built by externalization of violence defines itself with the gesture of distancing the violent Other at the margins and across the borders of the geopolitical entity. Such is the non-reflective, potentially self-destructive dimension of Europe. It can be self-destructive by means of enlarging, neutralizing and isolating its margins; it represses its own potential for heterogeneity and isolates its own aspects present in the Other. The non-reflexivity produces a double standard as well: what is presented as a norm of behaviour for other countries is not practiced within the boundaries (e.g. minorities in Greece), it can neither be analyzed nor changed, because the violent discourse disallows the perception of a member country as a violent or repressive actor. Marginalization, isolation, alienation, conflicts, black economy, inequality, illiberality, immorality, poverty and irrationality – these are not only in the European past, but still in the centre of the European “zone of peace” as its integral part. The choice of externalization of violence, therefore, is a partial solution which produces more problems – that in a way that is altogether not new at all.

Historical repetition or an opening

The geopolitical form of identity formation by externalization of the Other suspiciously resembles the repetition of the historical turn from pre-national communities to nation-states. In that period, the invention of the national identity has been an innovation, and as a connecting peacemaking tissue it was imposed over the bound territory. For Thomas Hobbes, the monopolization of the violence in the hands of the state was a solution to the conflicting local (religious, ethnic, clan) identities whose persistent inter-wars had been the curse of the age. However, violence was not removed from Hobbes’ state; it was merely externalized on inter-state level. Although the invention of the modern state decreased the level of local conflicts, the very success of the state functioning enabled larger scale violence, inter-state wars, with a culmination in the two World Wars. Therefore, the nation-state today is considered more of a problem than a solution. Consequently, if future Europe is constructed upon a geopolitically defined identity by externalization of its violence, it should be expected that it would come with a suite of unwanted followers: imposition of the Euro-identity as a binding tissue of the Union, a potential for a Euro-cultural hegemony, Euro-nationalism and further polarization between the imagined world of war and the equally imagined world of peace.

This is the reason why the move toward geopolitical Europe (and consequent policies) is warned against; thus constructed, Europe would be aimed toward a future of a cyclical repetition of institutionalized and legitimized violence. On the other hand, the temporal type of identity formation can create a Europe aimed at a new, unprecedented future, which would not saw the seed of its destruction in the process of its birth. The self-reflectively built Europe would not be violence-free, but instead actively peacemaking; it would be integrative instead of exclusionary in relation to conflicts within and without its boundaries. This is something I would call imagining Europe, imagining in two ways: imagined (as re-actualisation of values that can never be fully actualized, but they can verticalize the developmental trajectory of the European entity) and continually re-imagining itself (critically self-observing, self-reflective and actively self-constructive toward a better imagination of what Europe can become).

Jacques Derrida imagines such a Europe which could be “a perspective open to perfectability,” which, in his view, is the essential innovative quality of Europe in the frame of the world history and is more important than the question of geopolitical and cultural boundaries. Such Europe, an imaginative construct in self-reflective re-construction, a persistently unfinished project devoted to its perfecting, is the idea of the institutionalized peacemaking.

The Macedonian externalization

Examining the case of Macedonia within the discourse of violence will lead us toward a less cheerful theme. Macedonia, alike Bosnia, uncomfortably reminds Europe of its violently tainted past, which Europe is determined to remove from itself. This association is supported both by the European Prodi-like discourse of violence and the Macedonian reality, caught in a vicious circle. Let us illustrate this with an example:

Macedonia is externalized from the Union by a symptomatic form of violence: the visa regime. It is imposed in order to prevent a free flow of illegal and criminal migrants, services and goods, i.e. the visa wall should protect Europe form the Macedonian violent potential. The opposite happens more habitually than the desired: while non-violent travellers are often prevented from travel, the Macedonian probably most popular national export product is exactly crime. However, without mobility, the development of the legal economic and educational potential is debilitated and the desired Europisation of Macedonia is prevented. The impoverishment within the legal economy supports the development of grey and black economy, Macedonians have stronger motivation to leave the country for education and work, and braindrain and transnational crime follow -  Macedonia’s own unwanted and unplanned externalization of “the best and the worst from home.” It can be concluded that the visa regime indirectly supports the development of crime networks, which in turn legitimize the necessity of a visa regime. In effect, the country is de-Europised and put it into a solitary confinement, which still does not prevent the illegitimate networks to develop. This also leads to a formation of an unwanted and unplanned Macedonian collective identity, disadvantageous both from local and from the Union’s perspective.

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