Between Europe and the Mediterranean: What Fractures?
Title:
Between Europe and the Mediterranean: What Fractures?
Author:
Mohsen, Khadija
Appeared in:
History and anthropology
Paging:
Volume 18 (2007) nr. 3 pages 249-258
Year:
2007-09
Contents:
This article explores the different perceptions of the three actors in, and of, the triangular relationship between Europe, the US, and the Arab world, and the fault lines that have subsequently emerged between these actors. After the fall of Communism, fault lines shifted from the East toward the South, but the foundation of these fault lines are no longer of an economic or political nature. After September 11, the space is now marked out by a division of values of civilization. For the US, the 2001 attacks brought to light a construction of the enemy in which the American press and a considerable part of official discourse assimilated Islamism with terrorism. The war declared by the American executive is explicitly a war of civilizations which relies on religious categories (“The Axis of Evil”, “The Coalition of the Willing”). Geopolitics thus assumed a religious tinge, and the definition of allies and enemies is derived unconditionally from these principles. In Europe the construction was elaborated in a less Manichean mode but, as in the United Sates, it was a matter of working on the image of the Other, and of oneself, in a context dominated by a discourse on security. In this framework the Schengen agreement, which defined the modalities of the free circulation of persons in Europe, established, in a certain manner, a frontier between the internal and the external, substituting the national/foreign distinction by one which distinguishes between the inhabitants of the European Union and non-inhabitants, some of whom had formerly benefited from a preferential regime of free circulation based on colonial bonds. Thus although from the European perspective, these simplifications appear less visible, the mobilization and the implications of the war on terrorism are made in the name of these same civilizational principles. If such a space has thus been reconfigured, the world is no longer governed by principles; rather, these principles have given way to such essentialisms as Identity. By contrast, the countries of the southern shore of the Mediterranean do not really associate Europe with the conflict. The arguments seem rather to pit the southern countries against an Occident whose limits are not precisely defined. By defining its priorities and its solidarity in the name of the defence of common values, the Occident had defined itself by forcing, in a certain way, the Other to position itself as the anti-model. On both sides we have recourse to the registers of essentialism even if they are expressed in different ways. In the South also, the rejection of the Occident is created on the bases of identity. The Occidental is not hated because he is the artisan of a globalization taking place in the South, but because he is a Jew, an American, or a European. In this reciprocal construction of a designated enemy, systems of thought take shape that are oversimplified and dangerous. On one side, we are faced with confusions and amalgamations of Muslims, Islamists, terrorists, Arabs. On the other, the same groupings are made of Zionists, Jews, Israelis and their real or supposed allies: the Americans and, in broader terms, the Westerner. This reductive, even caricaturist, vision perfectly suits the rulers who derive their legitimacy from the mastery they demonstrate (partly to the west) over “their own” extremists. It also perfectly suits the radicals, who advance the notion of a distinct Arab-Muslim identity absolving them from not forming part of, and sharing, universal principals. It is equally seductive for those westerners who would be tempted to advance the notion of a cultural incompatibility between the peoples on the two shores of the Mediterranean. The author concludes by suggesting that one important way of bridging this fracture is for Europe to regain its Mediterranean Vocation partly, but not exclusively, through the Barcelona Process.
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