Mehr Realismus in die Utopie

In der Tat, lieber Michael: Politik dem Einzelnen und seiner Verantwortung. Meine Stimme hast Du; das utopische Programm, für das Du Derrida zitierst, steht dem meinen gar nicht so entfernt. Im Folgenden ein Essay, den ich für eine studentischen Konferenz zusammengesponnen habe. Er erinnert mich immer wieder daran, dass Utopien wenig nützen - und seien sie auch noch so freundschaftlich gedacht - solange sie es versäumen, ihren Zukunftswert zu beweisen. Mit anderen Worten: Jede Utopie, will sie ihr Gehörtwerden unterstreichen, muss mir nicht nur das "was?", sondern zugleich auch das "wie?" beantworten - sie muss "politisch" sein. Was ich genauer darunter verstehe, will ich Dir demnächst gern erläutern; für heute: der angekündigte Essay.

Auf bald _ W



Postcolonial Immigration – Shaping the “Western World”?

How can we openly and critically discuss the impact(s) of immigration on the so-called “Western World” without taking into account the consequences of the process we call “globalisation”? We can’t, and yet, often we do. The majority of the “Western World”’s attempts to deal with immigration fall short due to a distorted sense of perception that will leave us ignoring global challenges until the very moment we are inevitably confronted with them. Frequently, the “western” public engages in discussions on the chances, scopes and limits of integration and assimilation; the necessity of reworking immigration policies; the carving out and relevance of individual national Leitkulturen. [1] However, such political frameworks remain too narrow and all too easily allow us to focus on a development – immigration – which at the same time in fact is a constituent and consequence of a much larger shift in global set-up: I refer, of course, to globalisation (Let me provocatively ask: Were it not for the questions (and self-questioning) that current issues and debates on immigration raise, could one not presume that globalisation takes place only on the “peripheries”?).
There are cardinal questions, then, that need to be addressed: How can we come to understand the fundamental transformations we are currently witnessing? How can we as already “democratised” and “globalised” societies deal with the challenges which global immigration brings with it? Are we ready to respect the “other”; are we ready to fully embrace the ideals we so often consider universal, epitomised in the revolutionary call for “liberty, equality, fraternity”?
Our answers to these questions will undoubtedly inform the perspective from which we approach one of globalisation’s most inherent challenges: How to interpret the undeniable reality of global inequality which, since Marx, economists have modelled into the euphemistic concept of “uneven development”. For is it not this radical “unevenness” that accounts for the vast stream of global migration towards the “West”?
In dealing with this question, scholars have taken up positions on both sides of the issue. Dependency theorists constitute one camp which argues

not so much for a rational or planned disparity of wealth growing out of colonialism […] as for a logic within capitalism that wishes to block development in specified areas of the world. […] One region, rather than another, is permanently subject to robbery, rapacious investment, and structurally unequal terms of trade. These regions, as a direct legacy of colonialism, are ruled by a lumpen bourgeoisie, a comprador class that makes its living in the interstices of multinational capital, cutting lucrative deals for its inner circles while ignoring development as such. [2]

Opposed to this point view are those who consider globalisation a force so revolutionary that it will eventually succeed the present-day political order and replace the nation-state. Departing from the idea that capital currently already flows “nationlessly”, “acting on behalf of its own interests and profits rather than those of a given state and for that reason […] becoming harder to define or oppose than its predecessor” [3], Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s Empire in fact insists that “[n]othing can be outside the global flows of capital and Empire.” [4] Consequently, if there is no possibility of being ‘outside of Empire’, everyone/thing can only be inside, i.e. one, unified. According to Hardt and Negri’s prophecy, then, globalisation is to be reckoned with as a force so irresistible that it will eventually level all differences, reproducing nothing else except itself.
Holding up theory to past practice, the “West” seems to have favoured the former model, supporting an “uneven” globalisation process with its ceaselessly double-tongued declarations: We officially advocate democracy, but secretly “engineer” soon-to-be liberal governments [5]; officially advertise policies of free trade abroad (as did the American Ambassador in the opening session of our forum, when he pleaded for countries such as China and India to broaden access to their markets) while reinforcing a protectionist hand in the “West” [6]; insist on cultural autonomy but then attempt to influence “developing countries” through mechanisms of “soft power” [7].
Keeping these “concomitant effects” of “globalisation” in mind, opinions such as those voiced by Tom Friedman, Foreign Affairs columnist at The New York Times, seem only too cynical:

I always say, in this globalization system there is just one road; […] and it’s the road, I believe, of free markets, of liberalized markets, and liberalized politics. But there are many speeds […]. There’s one road, and there’s many speeds. But promise me you just won’t do one thing – not go down the road at all. If you do that, I promise you, you’ll bring nothing but ruin and devastation to your people. [8]

According to Friedman’s perception of globalisation, History – and I deliberately spell it with a capital H – is already inevitably and unalterably laid out before us; all we have to do is follow the road globalisation has finely paved out. What is intriguing about his point of view is that it preaches economic assimilation while in the same instant it unconsciously implies the idea of cultural assimilation: One road, no intersections, no side streets. One of the ultimate, but of course unintended mirrors of these calls are global development rankings such as the Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI) which “measure” the “development” and “transformation” of non-“western” nations according to “western” criteria. [9]
It remains, of course, easier to critique the current wave of development than to offer valid analyses and starting-points that will motivate and enable an active reshaping of configurations. So, what have I to add to the plea that “[g]lobalization, to benefit everyone, must shed the idea that its purpose is to mold weaker countries’ cultures in the image of stronger ones” [10]? In order to formulate my thesis, let me return to the paper’s title – Postcolonial Immigration – Shaping the “Western World”?. I intend to make aware of two separate sets of questions here: 1) The forum’s title Immigration – Shaping the Western World leaves open who is currently shaping, or about to shape, the Western World. Is it us? Or is it the continuously growing flow of immigrants? Are we still in control, still in “power”, or are we about to be “overpowered”? These puns, superficial as they may be, serve well to reveal the struggle involved in current debates on immigration in Europe and the United States: namely, that we are not prepared – in the double sense of the word – to open up to those “others” who will in the future continue to arrive knocking at our door. 2) At the same time, while acknowledging “western” socienties’ reluctance to open up, I refer to global immigration as “postcolonial”. I wish to take a (what some would call moral) stand on the topic by contextualising current migration trends within and as a consequence of the history of colonialism. Despite the formal collapse of European empires, or even: because of the formal collapse of European empires, do we not have the undeferrable duty, responsibility and engagement to invite to participate in the wealth we have been able to enjoy those to whom we have neglected this very wealth? Are we, as “globalised” nations, at the same time entitled to limit the distribution of wealth while profiting from its disparate production?
Seeing that I am already proposing radical and messianic measures: Why not begin by aspiring to transform the global social sphere into a truly democratic space – with roads to follow, surely, but also rules to safeguard that no-one is harmed. As Hugh Silverman puts it – and please forgive me for quoting him in the German translation: „[R]echte Freundschaften legen die Räume fest, in denen die einzige Art, Freunde zu sein, diejenige ist, nur Freunde zu sein, Freundschaften, in denen die Differenzen zwischen Personen in Freundschaft eine Sa-che von Gerechtigkeit sind.” [11]



[1] Compare, for instance, http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=4790 and http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=7392.
[2] Timothy Brennan, “The Image-Function of the Periphery”, in: Ania Loomba et. al. (eds.), Postcolonial Studies and Beyond, Duke University Press (Durham, London) 2005, pp. 101-122, here p. 109.
[3] Vilashini Cooppan, “The Ruins of Empire: The National and Global Politics of America’s Return to Rome”, in: Postcolonial Studies and Beyond, pp. 80-100, here p. 85.
[4] Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire, Harvard University Press 2001, p. 43. For introductory reading consider the London Review of Books: Michael Bull, “You can't build a new society with a Stanley knife”, October 4th, 2001, http://www.lrb.co.uk/v23/n19/bull01_.html.
[5] “If you believe the White House, Iraq’s future government is being designed in Iraq. If you believe the Iraqi people, it is being designed at the White House. Technically, neither is true: Iraq’s future government is being engineered in an anonymous research park in suburban North Carolina.” Naomi Klein, “Hold Bush to His Lie”, posted February 6th, 2004, on www.nologo.org. Similar degrees of western “influence” are obvious, for instance, in Sudan and Tschad.
[6] “[O]ur aid policies are not coherent with the rest of the [foreign] policy agenda. In regard to trade and aid we give out with one hand, and we take back with the other. The agricultural policies prevent access for poor farmers to our markets. But even more problematic is, of course, that export subsidies for the surplus food produced by European farmers are being flooded into the markets of the poor.” Anders Wijkman, “Rethink Development cooperation”, address at the meeting of the Eko-social Forum in Vienna, October 15th, 2004, www.globalmarshallplan.org. Wijkman is a member of the European Parliament. See also José Antonio Ocampo, “Globalization, Development and Democracy”, in: Items and Issues, Vol. 5, No. 3, Social Science Research Council, 2005, pp. 11-20, here p. 11: “[V]arious goods of special interest to the developing countries are subject to the highest levels of protection, and in the case of agriculture, to subsidies in the industrialized countries.”
[7] “In recent years, a number of American thinkers, led by Joseph S. Nye Jr. of Harvard, have argued that the United States should rely more on what he calls its ‘soft power’ — the […] appeal of its ideas, its culture and its way of life — and so rely less on the ‘hard power’ of its stealth bombers and aircraft carriers.” Josef Joffe, “The Perils of Soft Power”, in: The New York Times, May 14th, 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/14/magazine/14wwln_lede.html.
[8] “Terrorism May Have Put Sand in its Gears, but Globalization Won’t Stop.” Tom Friedman, interviewed by Nayan Chanda, YaleGlobal, February 3rd, 2003, http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=870.
[9] http://www.bertelsmann-transformation-index.de/11.0.html?&L=1.
[10] “Globalization and Culture”, Address by Queen Noor of Jordan at the 50th Anniversary Symposium of The Aspen Institute, August 22, 2000 – Aspen, CO, http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/about/academicpapers.jsp.
[11] Hugh J. Silverman, “Rechte Freunde: Die Ethik der (postmodernen) Beziehungen”, in: Erik M. Vogt et. al. (eds.), Derrida und die Politiken der Freundschaft, translated and with an introduction by Erik M. Vogt, Turia + Kant (Vienna) 2003, pp. 19-42, here: p. 21.