Border/Boundary

“A boundary is not that at which something stops but, as the Greeks recognized, the boundary is that from which something begins its essential unfolding.”[1]

(Martin Heidegger, 1951)

Since the implementation of the Schengen Area into the European Union (EU) in 1999 the EU nurtures the “free movement of people, goods, services, and capital.”[2] On the official homepage it states, that “[i]t is an area without internal borders, an area within which citizens, many non-EU nationals, business people and tourists can freely circulate […].“[3] This area creates an open space for the circulation of goods and people. Passport controls at borders have been abolished within the Schengen Area. According to Paul Gschrey “the border structures are expected to dissolve, give way and to facilitate movement – but not all travellers are welcome.”[4] This is a crucial point. The travelling among Europeans has indeed become easier. When travelling by car or train, one does not even have to realize the crossing of a border. However for non-European travellers and especially illegal migrants, the borders have almost become impassable barriers: “In attempts to reduce the potential risk to the European Community the hazards for irregular migrants increase” constantly.[5]

 

Étienne Balibar even introduces the idea of “the Great Wall of Europe under construction,” separating the European continent from its North African ‘neighbours’.[6] Thinking of the hundreds of refugees, whose journeys towards the European Union end tragically each year, the European border, indeed, seems to be a boundary at which something stops, in allusion to the opening citation by Martin Heidegger. What unfolds are the inequalities which we are facing on our borders today. Borders are semipermeable – for some easy to pass by, for others almost impossible to overcome. It is this inequality that makes contemporary borders worth rethinking. And it is in this thinking about borders, in the discourse and activism engaging with borders, that something unfolds its (essential) being. In engaging with borders we challenge them and question the inequalities they make us face and which are inacceptable. 

The question that arises is as follows: how can borders be mediated and controlled in order to diminish (recent) inequalities? What is at stake here according to Étinne Balibar is “the operation of the ‘border’, (which) […] illustrate[s] the relationship between politics and violence.”[7] The border itself is operating, because someone operates it by exploiting it. Operators such as the European Border Surveillance System (Eurosur) or the European Agency Frontex may come to mind.[8] In order to prevent the ‘fortress’ of Europe from potential risks, these agencies function as radical border controlling systems, putting forth the inequalities of our borders. 

However, the abolishment of borders does not seem to offer a solution. According to Balibar, a borderless “’world’ would run the risk of being a mere arena for the unfettered domination of the private centres of power which monopolize capital, communications and, perhaps also, arms.”[9] It is quite easy to imagine companies such as Facebook or Google, constantly accumulating knowledge about us and our online-behaviour, to exercise their power in a way paved out by Balibar. Our focus should thus turn to the operators of our borders, “states and supranational institutions”, and possible systems of controlling them:[10] “It is a question […] of what democratic control is to be exerted on the controllers of borders.”[11] At the end of his essay, Balibar hints at who such controllers might be: “Now, […] one most often needs interpreters, mediators.”[12]

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[1] Martin Heidegger, Building, Dwelling, Thinking (1951), in: David Farrell Krell (Editor), Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings, from Being and Time (1927) to The Task of Thinking (1964), Routledge, 2011: p. 250.

[2] This and more information on the contents of the Schengen Convention are available online: http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/internal_market/ – last visited on 30.10.2013.

[3] This statement is taken from the section concerning borders and visas on the official EU homepage: http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/borders-and-visas/
index_en.htm – last visited on 01.11.2013.

[4] Paul Gschrey, Tracing Borderlines: Shifting European Borders and Migratory Movement, in: John Hutnyk (Editor), Beyond Borders, Pavement Books, 2012: p. 171.

[5] Paul Gschrey, Tracing Borderlines: Shifting European Borders and Migratory Movement, in: John Hutnyk (Editor), Beyond Borders, Pavement Books, 2012: p. 176.

[6] Étienne Balibar, Strangers as Enemies. Further Reflections on the Aporias of Transnational Citizenship (2006), in: Globalization and Autonomy, http://www.globalautonomy.ca/global1/
article.jsp?index=RA_Balibar_Strangers.xml – last visited on 10.11.2013: p. 3.

[7] Étienne Balibar, Politics and the Other Scene, Verso, 2002: p. xi.

[8] Compare: Paul Gschrey, Tracing Borderlines: Shifting European Borders and Migratory Movement, in: John Hutnyk (Editor), Beyond Borders, Pavement Books, 2012: pp. 175,176.

[9] Étienne Balibar, What is a Border?, in: Étienne Balibar, Politics and the Other Scene, Verso, 2002: p. 85.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid.

 

Filling the gap

In his text “Remembering, Repeating and working-through” (1914) Freud claims that the job of the psychoanalyst is to fill the gaps of the patients memory (see p. 147/148). As I am my own patient and analyst at the same time (and in a way this holds true for Freud as well – his dream analysis was indeed based on his own dreams…) I have to deal with the gap of my memory work on this blog myself.

Since the last and first entry there has been a gap of almost two months. In the meantime I had already written a second entry but I felt some kind of blockade to actually post it. Why could I not post a follow up text? 

 

The only way of overcoming this blockade seems to me to address my problem publicly – here. As this blog is an experiment I decided finally to give in to my doubts and to engage with the issues that I am struggling with. Mainly – who am I to engage with a topic such as refugee memory? This question grew so big in my head that it let to some kind of helplessness and eventually to me not posting anything anymore.

I have grown up in this bourgeois and safe middle class environment and am fully aware of it. And even the divorce of my parents (though indeed it means the loss of a feeling of being “home”) could never compete with the experience of being forced to leave ones home country due to civil wars or other kinds of unbearable situations. Nevertheless I tried to unavailingly relate myself to the subject that I am addressing, which is most obvious in the first entry. 

 

As the question of ‘why me’ let to the incapacity of writing about refugee memory I decided to keep my issues in mind but to skip the question to the end of the experiment. In fact it does not really matter who engages with the question, as I think that it is important to engage with it in the first place which is more relevant. Maybe the reach of these entries will stay quite private. Maybe it is my personal engagement with refugees and floating memory and maybe that is ok. 

But even if the stakes are not that high this does not mean that this experiment is not worth a try. And as Hans-Jörg Rheinberger has pitched with the notion of the “epistemic thing”, you never know the outcome of something right from the start (of course he would have put this in much more elaborate words). Work in progress.