Re: <documenta X><blast> urb anim age
Etienne Balibar (blast-agent@forum.documenta.de)
Thu, 25 Sep 1997 08:28:47 -0400
Recently I, like a number of others, have come to think that the status
of the _border_ is one of the key questions. How is it experienced?
What type of coercion does it impose? What is its institutional
definition? What is its democratic or nondemocratic character? What
kind of control can be exercised over the state's management of borders,
over the way the states use borders to control populations? Of course
this problem is not without its links to immigration, but it steers us
toward other reflections. I remember the nice title of a review which
made useful contributions to the debates on French society in the
1980s: _Sans Frontières_. The title reinvigorated a cosmopolitan
tradition, more libertarian than internationalist; it also served as a
slogan. While I don't think that we are headed toward a world without
borders or some kind of "postnational" humanity, I am persuaded that the
current status of borders is an untenable archaism; the whole question
is in what direction the evolution of borders should proceed. The fact
is that there is an intensification of the tensions between a police
logic and a democratic logic. The fate of what was formerly called
cosmopolitanism or internationalism is now being played out over the
very concrete matters of family status and the right to political
asylum.
The first set of core problems can be explored in a historical
perspective. Where do the current forms come from? What are their
causes, and into what are they likely to evolve? What are the
alternatives? On the other hand, how can we understand the violence
that accompanies the various manifestations of these problems?
E. Balibar
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documenta X Kassel and http://www.documenta.de 1997
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