European Cosmopolitanism

Colonial Histories and Postcolonial Societies

Gurminder Bhambra, John Narayan, Gurminder K. Bhambra, John Narayan, Gurminder Bhambra, Gurminder K. Bhambra, John Narayan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138961104
• eBook ISBN: 9781317335719
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book provides a fresh examination of the cosmopolitan project of post-war Europe from a variety of perspectives. It explores the ways in which European cosmopolitanism can be theorized differently if we take into account histories which have rarely been at the forefront of such understandings. It also uses neglected historical resources to draw out new and unexpected entanglements and connections between understandings of European cosmopolitanism both in Europe and elsewhere. The final part of the book places European cosmopolitanism in tension with contemporary postcolonial configurations around diaspora, migration, and austerity. Overall, it seeks to draw attention to the ways in which Europe's posited others have always been very much a part of Europe's colonial histories and its postcolonial present.

1 Introduction

Colonial Histories and the Postcolonial Present of European Cosmopolitanism

Gurminder K. Bhambra and John Narayan

As the post-war European project of union – whether ever-closer, or not – approaches its sixtieth anniversary, the continent is beset by the twin issues of austerity and migration. Since 2008, the financial crash and the related politics of austerity have enveloped both individual countries and the EU as a whole as it has sought to address the growing tension between its commitment to democratic values and the perceived need for a response that maintains the technical infrastructure of the Eurozone. This has been most evident in the response to the situation in Greece (although similar issues have arisen in Portugal and Spain and also in Ireland). Migration, intersecting with the politics of austerity in many ways, has become the other defining issue of our times, especially, once again, in its vivid manifestation in Greece as surrounding countries put up fences to restrict the movement of people.

In the European context, however, it is important to note that migration refers both to the movement of EU citizens across internal borders as well as to the movement of peoples into Europe as a consequence of war, starvation, and the premeditated destruction of cities and countries in north Africa and across the Middle East. These, seemingly extraordinary, movements of people that are normal elsewhere are complemented by the continuing quotidian migrations of peoples via work permits, family reunion processes, tourism, and the suchlike (which is not to suggest that these are not also subject to politicization and increased scrutiny and control). However, it is the images of refugees and asylum seekers at Europe’s borders and their migrations north and west into Germany and Sweden primarily that has ushered up a moral panic of epic proportions across the continent.

This Introduction is being written a few months after the pictures of the washed up body of the 3-year-old Syrian boy, Alan Kurdi, circulated around the world and prompted, for a moment, compassion over resentment, grief over antipathy. It pointed to the possibility that those of us in Europe might be better than we had hitherto demonstrated ourselves to be. That moment, unfortunately, quickly passed and usual service, in terms of rising xenophobia and racism, has since largely resumed (although this is not to diminish the immense outpouring also of welcome, volunteering, and everyday concern expressed by people who have taken in others and sought to support refugees and migrants, rather it is to point to the tension between the generalized sentiments and those marginalized activities). There have been news-stories of trains taking people to camps without their knowledge, of people being forced to wear ID bracelets if they wanted access to food, of suggestions that migrants could be coerced to work for free. Which histories does Europe remember and which does it not wish to repeat again?

It is in the midst of these conflicts and conflicting understandings of Europe that we question the growing distance between the claims of cosmopolitanism that are held to animate the European project and the turn to a parochial and dangerous nativism that threatens to send Europe back into the very pre-war history from which union was supposed to provide an escape.

I

As Bhambra (2011, 2016) has argued previously, the cosmopolitanism of ‘cosmopolitan Europe’, for European intellectuals such as Habermas (2003, 2012) and Beck (2002), is one that is largely derived from the Western European philosophical tradition and associated with the development of liberal democracies there. Notwithstanding the emphasis on its historical roots, the tradition is generally understood in the light of ideals believed to be brought to fruition in the post-second world war period. That is, in terms of the development of sovereign nation states entering peaceful relations with each other and deriving their legitimacy from sovereign peoples expressing their individual rights and freedoms.

Such an articulation rests on a particular understanding of European development; one that evades acknowledging European domination over much of the world through colonialism, dispossession, appropriation, and enslavement as significant to that history. It also disavows examining the consequences of domination for the contemporary multicultural constitution of European societies. Standard understandings of European cosmopolitanism, for example, rarely address those multicultural others who come to constitute European polities through imperial endeavours. European multiculturalism is not a phenomenon of the 1960s, but is rather associated with empire – as such, European states have been multicultural for as long as they have been imperial (see also Elliot-Cooper 2015). Yet, this colonial past does not figure in the deliberations of Europe’s intellectuals as they argue for the idea of cosmopolitanism to animate and ‘finish’ the European project of ‘Enlightenment’. As such, the focus of this book is to recover those other histories and narratives that have been as central to the shaping of cosmopolitan Europe, but omitted in the standard accounts of its history.

The post-war European project, given institutional form as the EEC and then EU, is generally agreed to begin with European states wishing to make amends for the recent past which had seen two world wars and the first genocide on European land. As Bhambra (2009, 2016) argues, the project of cosmopolitan Europe was organized around an expressly stated wish for the diversity of nation-states to find an equilibrium between national and cultural differences and broader and longer-standing civilizational commonalities. This is most clearly manifest in the motto of the union which varies around the theme of ‘unity in diversity’. It is telling, however, that the diversity that is referenced is simply that between states, not the diversity within states as constituted by those multicultural others created by empire and imperial activities. There is little explicit recognition of these differences or their long-standing constitution in and through the civilizational commonalities otherwise posited as European. These differences are presented within the standard literature as being of a completely other order. However, if we were to take the colonial histories of European countries seriously then we would be able to re-frame these differences as also within the European story. This would enable us to reshape our understandings of the past and, in so doing, intervene in the development of different possibilities for the future.

The standard literature, for example, rarely discusses the fact that the majority of the initial countries constituting union were empires and, as such, union meant the coming together of imperial states together with their colonial constituencies (for exceptions, see Hansen 2002, Garavini 2012, Hansen and Jonsson 2014). Looking at four of the original six members of the European Economic Community, we see that Algeria was an integral aspect of France and France also controlled a number of other colonies in Africa and elsewhere; Italy controlled parts of Somaliland; Belgium controlled the Congo; and the Netherlands controlled Suriname and a number of Caribbean islands. With the accession of Spain, Britain, and Portugal in subsequent years, the idea that it was nation-states that were joining together is demonstrated as a clear fiction given the extent of overseas territories that they brought with them. As Hansen argues (2002, 2004), the European project was established by the coming together of colonial states and constituted itself in colonial terms, yet, colonialism is rarely mentioned in discussions of this project.

The most significant example here is the fact that Algeria entered the EEC in 1957 on much the same basis as France – the main difference being that Algerian workers were not free to move between the member countries nor were they to receive wages or social insurance at European rates (Hansen and Jonsson 2014: 233). In this way, we can see that the European project was both a colonial project and a racial one from the very outset. Further, when Algeria fought for independence from France, it was simultaneously a struggle for independence from Europe, broadly speaking. Yet, as Hansen (2002) argues, the official history of the European project presents it as achieving peace in Europe since the end of the second world war. Its failure to recognize the colonies of European states as integral to its own project enables it also to evade consideration of war and violence as continuing since the end of the second world war; not as something that was resolved by the project. This error in its own self-perception is compounded by the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union in 2012 (see Hansen and Jonsson 2013).

Alongside the member states having colonies, the European project was itself conceived as a colonial project, as Hansen and Jonsson (2011, 2013, 2014) have convincingly demonstrated. Depleted in resources and manpower after the second world war, there was a sense that Europe could only enter the world stage again if it could rebuild itself to its former stature. For this to happen required the land, labour, and resources of Africa – that is, it required ‘bringing Africa as a dowry to Europe’ as Hansen and Jonsson (2011) argue quoting one of the key architects of union, Robert Schuman. Yet, Africa is absent from most considerations of the emergence and development of European project. Indeed, in the context of the current ‘refugee crisis’ many recent members of the European Union are questioning why they should offer support to peoples coming to Europe as a consequence of the imperial histories of other members. What they do not seem to realize is that if the European project as a whole was (and is) a colonial venture, then all those who join it are required to share the responsibilities emanating from the continuing legacies of this colonial history. It is inappropriate to wish to share in the benefits of union without also taking responsibility for how those benefits were accrued.

II

The idea of a post-war European cosmopolitanism unifying the demoi of Europe in order to achieve peace and prosperity became even more pronounced with the end of the Cold War and ascension of neo-liberal globalization (Habermas 2001). Due to the perceived effects of globalization, such as the increased labour market participation of developing countries, increased transnational capital flows and the apparent decline of nation-state sovereignty, European cosmopolitanism and its institutional expression in the EU have been taken as the future of democracy in a globalized world. European cosmopolitanism is therefore not only seen as preserving the peace between European nations, but also as a model of post-national democracy which the globe can learn from and emulate. Moreover, such a cosmopolitan Europe is often heralded as providing the democratic means of managing the effects of economic globalization, achieving trans-European social and economic justice, and helping Europe to play an integral part in solving global governance issues such as climate change (Beck and Grande 2007, Bohman 2007, Habermas 2006). If the rights of individuals as subjects capable of property had expanded beyond those of individuals as members of democratic collectivities – that is, if ‘markets’ had supplanted ‘publics’ – then that was regarded as a temporal problem of adjustment.

However, in light of the Eurozone crisis and the implementation of austerity policies by the EU, European Central Bank (ECB), and International Monetary Fund (IMF) across southern Europe, this judgement has been called into question. European intellectuals such as Beck (2013) and Habermas (2012, 2015), who had previously advocated the necessary advance of cosmopolitanism, have begun to see the actions of European leaders and technocrats as a betrayal of Europe’s cosmopolitan origins. This is exemplified in the evocation of a dual-speed Europe, where there is now a centre and periphery relationship between northern and southern European states; the autocratic enforcement of austerity in southern Europe through the disregard of democracy and enforcement of technocratic rule in Italy and Greece by the EU and IMF; and the rise of anti-EU sentiment amongst EU populaces more generally. All of this seems to reveal a democratic and cosmopolitan deficit at the heart of the EU, where cosmopolitanism has become little more than a form of market sovereignty. This form of cosmopolitanism propagates the transnational enforcement of neo-liberalism and the safeguarding of the interests of Northern European finance capital. Advocates of a cosmopolitan Europe, such as Beck and Habermas, now argue that Europe must resist austerity and return Europe back to its cosmopolitan trajectory.

Yet, this narrative of Europe’s deviation from its deeper cosmopolitan heritage inherently silences Europe’s earlier embracing of neo-liberalism and how this history is entwined with both its colonial past and neo-imperial present. Europe’s present turn to neo-liberalism has not simply arrived with the onset of the Eurozone crisis and the turn towards austerity. The nascent moves towards the establishment of the European Single Market in early 1980s, the signing of the Schengen Agreement (1985), and the expansion of the European Community to include Spain and Portugal (1986), were designed to increase the competiveness and technological advancement of Europe (Garavini 2012: 259–61). Moreover, these changes to the European Community were made in response to the rise of neo-liberalism in the Anglosphere and put Europe on a path towards what Abdelal (2007) has called ‘managed globalization’. This saw Europe head towards the neo-liberal targets of deregulation, liberalization and a reduction of the power of the nation-state, but with the added twist of attempting to impose Europe’s agenda within international financial institutions, such as the IMF.

Europe’s idiosyncratic take on neo-liberalism not only transformed the life experiences and possibilities of its own citizens, but also marked a turning point in Europe’s interaction with its former colonies. As Garavini (2012: 260) points out, despite European socialism’s ideas about supporting the interests of the Global South, the move towards the European Single Market meant that ‘Anti-Fascism and the “colonial burden” were concepts entirely out of the tune’ with a neo-liberal Europe. This was an allusion to the eradication of the belief that the European political project and its dreams of democracy were linked to the dream of democracy beyond Europe. Indeed, one can trace this line of thinking back to European anti-imperial activism at the start of twentieth century (see Shilliam, this book). The results of this neo-liberal eradication of the tying of Europe’s democracy to democracy beyond Europe was to be found in how its elites supported the IMF and World Bank’s Structural Adjustment Policies in the Global South. These neo-imperial policies ravaged the post-colonial states and populations of the Global South and brought them under the strictures of neo-liberal globalization (see Chossudovsky 2005, Klein 2007).

This alternative history of Europe’s descent into neo-liberalism and its neo-imperial practices in the Global South (see Prashad 2007, Narayan, this book) highlight that austerity in Europe has a history that precedes the Eurozone crisis and which stretches beyond Europe itself. More to the point, they hint that Europe is no innocent victim of austerity, but rather the author of its own demise. What we call austerity in Europe was first unpacked in the Global South as Structural Adjustment Policies. What has happened in Greece had already happened in the Global South and there will likely be lessons to be learnt from those earlier experiences (Prashad 2015, Santos 2007). If we are to use this expansive history of austerity properly then we must question cosmopolitan Europe’s narration of the Eurozone crisis and the European project itself. This means questioning the ‘fall from grace’ narrative that intellectuals such as Habermas have provided about Europe’s turn to austerity and asking whether the European project was anti-cosmopolitan long before the Eurozone crisis. This also means questioning whether the silencing of austerity’s non-European history prevents the emergence of an adequate politics of anti-austerity. Moreover, these questions reveal, much like the chapters in this book, that if Europe is to survive as a political project we must become adept at seeing the colonial history and neo-imperial present, which lurk in the shadows of Europe and its ideas of cosmopolitanism.

III

This book does not address the specific exclusions and omissions discussed in this Introduction nor is the focus on pluralizing narratives of Europe or European cosmopolitanism. Rather, the chapters seek to recover silenced histories as a mode of rethinking dominant narratives and examining how these broader engagements provide us with expanded resources with which to address the key issues of our contemporary times. Indeed, the explicit focus of the book on Europe is nicely balanced in many of the chapters by bringing in those histories which have also been central to Europe, but neglected in its self-understandings (see Demir, Narayan, Outhwaite and Ray, Shilliam, this book). Further, other chapters examine the development of cosmopolitan practices beyond Europe and remind us that understandings and practices of cosmopolitanism are themselves cosmopolitanly present in our world, if not our dominant understandings of that world (see Demart, George, Shilliam, this book). The intention across the chapters is to forge an understanding of European cosmopolitanism, its history, identity and politics, which is more adequate to its postcolonial and multicultural twenty-first century constituencies than most standard accounts narrate. It is to recover those absences and weave them into the central stories and to examine how the bringing together of what are posited as different narratives enables stronger and more forceful explanations for our present condition to be put forward.

The book is divided into three parts. Part I explores the ways in which European cosmopolitanism can be theorized otherwise if we take into account those histories which have rarely been at the forefront of such understandings. In this section, Meyda Yeğenoğlu utilizes the thought of Jacques Derrida to argue that European cosmopolitanism cannot be founded upon asking for a form of forgiveness that would banish and forget its colonial past. Rather, Yeğenoğlu argues that Europe must base its cosmopolitanism upon an ‘ethical mourning’ that would remember Europe’s past crimes so as to ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• 1 Introduction: Colonial Histories and the Postcolonial Present of European Cosmopolitanism
• PART I Theorizing European Cosmopolitanism Otherwise
• PART II Alternative Historical Groundings of Cosmopolitanisms in Europe
• PART III Contemporary Postcolonial Cosmopolitanisms
• Index