CIAO DATE: 11/2008
May 2006
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
The Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition was highly privileged to have Étienne Balibar as its Distinguished Visiting Lecturer for 2006. This research article is the text of his remarks delivered at McMaster University on 16 March 2006. The essay ranges widely, tracing the hybridity of globalization in counterposing the new forms of exclusion, imperialism, and racialization that accompany the "flows" of information and capital in the current globalized economy. As global capitalism penetrates more geographical areas and commodifies more forms of human activity than ever before, its emergent supraterritoriality is accompanied by new "borders," fences, restrictions, laws, police actions, and militarization to control human movement and to secure capitalist power. Building on the key concepts of the "stranger" and the "enemy," Balibar traces these processes and situates them in the present world context. He also expands on the discussion of forms of violence that appear to dominate at the end of the most violent century in human history. Reflecting on notions like "global civil war," he worries about detaching these conflicts from their local specificities and seeing them as a unified phenomenon.
In the latter part of his address, Professor Balibar explores options for hope and for political action. Beginning with a notion of transnational citizenship, he examines the possibilities for intercultural translation. He uses this examination to reflect upon "cosmopolitics" as opposed to "cosmopolitanism" and the "co-citizen" rather than the "citizen of the world." He suggests considering citizenship as a differentiated and partial notion that might be shaped in various ways to provide cultural, political, and social rights, constituting a "right to reside with rights." He then discusses the potential of a double possibility: freedom of circulation and the right of residency or settlement. These notions are helpful because they provide the basis for concrete political actions in the day-to-day of our lives.
Resource link: Strangers as Enemies: Further Reflections on the Aporias of Transnational Citizenship [PDF] - 475K