London crowd. Flickr/Ant Jackson. Some rights reserved.Charlie Hebdo reminds us that life is much more complicated than the simple contrast between the bad
guy, “the Islamist,” vs. the good guy, “the European”.
Left and Right
The Political Left
always points at something “beyond,” or more precisely, “beneath” this simple
picture where the truth proves much more complicated. The power of the
arguments of the Left is hidden in premises with which the great majority of
European people are assumed to agree.
Thus. It is indeed a
simple “postmodern fact” that those Islamists who killed eleven people were not
born killers. As we all start from zero, from pure nothingness and contingency,
it must be concluded that there could be no unchanging, perennial, ahistorical
essence in this world. If they “could” kill those innocent people just because
they depict something, for them, wrong, then something external must have made
them that way.
We are all born
innocent. If we agree on this point, then this massacre only raises the one
question of how and why a human being reaches such an extreme point in
depravity that he can commit such a barbaric crime.
These assumptions allow
Slavoj Zizek, in his article on this precise issue, to claim that “those who do
not want to talk critically about liberal democracy should also keep quiet
about religious fundamentalism."
For the Left, the pure
givenness has never been enough, as what is given is taken to be a material
construction. Hence, if we really desire to resolve this mess that is growing
day by day at the borders of Europe, we have to think more deeply, indeed
“critically”.
The keyword here is
“critical” which, within the European context, always-already entails a
peculiar prefix, namely, “self”. Self-criticism is the glorious tenet that
marks the ontology of European Leftists; it is not only the “natural
disposition” of the Left towards the world, but also its selfish obsession that
it cannot give up – an issue we will come back to later.
Having discerned
responsibility not in the Islamist perpetrators but in the larger picture, the
Left urges us to desist from Islamophobia, fascism and any kind of essentialism
about the Other; and it struggles to keep the multicultural ideal alive.
The Political Right, on
the other hand, is not as “simple” as historically the Left takes it to be. It
is not that they do not grasp the contingency of our beginnings. Yet, the Right
still misses something that the Left so benevolently embraces. People on the
Right are bereft of self-criticism; they are in love with their own image in a
world where anything non-European serves only as a justification for this
well-deserved narcissism. For them, if Charlie Hebdo, or any such event, raises
any question at all, it can only be the one that leads directly to a
reinforcement of their self-love. So, the Right will simply wonder, “Why can’t
they become just like ‘us’?”
If there is no essence,
or, as Sartre puts it, if existence precedes essence; and, if, consequently,
you are the one who chooses what you are to be, then why would you like to be
like them? Look at them, at how inferior they are, how barbaric, how ugly they
are? Just be like “us”, accept “our” supremacy.
Notice how the word
“us” takes on an insidious twofold sense here. You will become like “us”, but
you ought not to forget the original. You ought to be grateful to “us” that
“we” have accepted you into “our” community.
The Right accepts the
contingency of beginnings only to the extent that this very acceptance proves
the strength of their unique history which in spite of this absurd
arbitrariness could built something tremendously meaningful and unique out of
what it was that made “us” ‘Europeans’ and them ‘non-Europeans’.
The randomness of the
singularity therefore only reinforces the unparalleled stability of western
history; after all, it is Europe that epitomizes the highest peak that humanity
has ever reached, not the Middle East, not China, and not India.
We have the Right and
the Left with their own peculiarities; man may not have essence, but doctrines,
ideologies and political positions inevitably do. This is the “general
panorama” of Europe that is full of repetitions and no more reductive than any
representation would be.
non-European Europeans
However, it is not my
aim to discuss in this essay for or against the Left or the Right; that has
been done abundantly by many authors, much more extensively and professionally
than I can. What I would like to point out here, rather, is something that does
not yet exist in this general panorama even though it is there. Along the lines
of Gayatri Spivak’s famous question “can the subaltern speak?”, I will try to
reveal something whose existence is denied not only by the Right but more
arduously and surprisingly by the Left. This “something” is a concept which is
not my creation, but it is already there, given, created by history. Let me
call it “the non-European Europeans” and ask: “can non-European Europeans
exist?”
In order to understand
what this concept signifies, we must, first of all, understand how thousands of
people can join IS, not only those whose lives have been shattered by the chaos
American forces visited on the Middle East, but also those who were in the
periphery of these events, and, therefore, in a sense, lack the direct justifications
to join any radical organization, but nevertheless, choose to do so.
I refer to those
hundreds of European citizens who went to Syria to join IS. But I also include
those moderate people living in relatively liberal Muslim countries who one day
decided to join IS. Or, let me put it in this way, I register the silence of
the “innocent” Muslim people before the phenomenon fundamentalist, extremist,
or jihadist – the violence that takes whatsoever form. Without noting this
silence, we can neither understand the attack on Charlie Hebdo nor discern what
is so crucially missing in this picture.
This silence is the
restlessness of hypocrisy. It is the inquietude of hypocrisy that pushes people
into the arms of IS and of any other fundamentalist groups. Precisely, it is
the hypocrisy of being in the middle of modernity and tradition. The latter can
be Islam or anything else; that is not what is decisive here. Rather, the
problem is the unbearable split of being two different people in one, single
body: it is a conscious schizophrenia. It is suffering. It is not being able to
know what you are, the ultimate loss of your integrity, consistency, and
self-attachment; an uprootedness that floats in the middle without finding any
secure corner for itself.
Hence, there is a spectre
of hypocrisy hovering above the non-western world. And one can claim that the
home of this spectre is the Middle East: the counter-image of a Europe that
Edward Said extensively analyzed from Aeschylus to the twentieth century.
The ultimate force
behind any fundamentalist organization in the Middle East is therefore the
breakdown of this hypocrisy; the moment that the non-European man recoils:
“Enough, I cannot bear this!”
This existential
collapse is followed by taking shelter in the nearest form of integrity that
one can find; and the crux of the problem is that there is only one choice which
has integrity in the Middle East, and it is offered by fundamentalism. In other
words, there is only one resolution of the conflict between tradition and
modernity. The split, the subjective reflection of this conflict, is what fundamentalist
groups such as IS exploit to the letter. They know that the more pressure the
world exerts on Muslims, the more people will join them.
What is right or what
is wrong is secondary in this dialectic; first comes the existential anguish
that non-European man suffers from. And just to emphasize: it is not an anguish
arising from the plenitude of the bourgeoisie. On the contrary, the scarcity of
reality hits him hard and cracks his ontology.
Coming back to our
concept of the non-European European. This is the other pole of this equation;
the split resolved in favor of (post)modernity; the integrity that is found in
European values. However, despite the fact that IS signifies an absolute hatred
towards the West, the non-European European does not bear an unconditional love
for the West, for being European does not necessarily mean self-love and
narcissism. And precisely on this point, not only the Right but also the Left
fails to realize what it is to be a non-European European.
Being superior to the Other
Let me begin with the
political Right which, at first appearances, seems surprisingly more open to
this concept than the Left is. However, behind its alleged openness hides yet
another hypocrisy. The Right does not care about the Other qua Other, or, it
cares insofar as the Other satisfies its own desires.
There is a predominant,
almost a “natural” sense of superiority in the political Right of Europe. The
Right will welcome non-European Europeans indeed, but only in order to hear the
echoes of its own supremacy, to fortify its edifice.
It is not the Other
here that exists; rather, it is the European ego that appraises itself by
mediating itself through itself while acting like it is the Other; that is, the
Other is just a means to intensify the satisfaction of being superior to the
Other.
Hence, the non-European
European exists insofar as it serves the desires of the “original” European. In
a word, there is neither equality nor solidarity with the non-European European
on the Right. There is pure submission, if you like to be like “us.”
What about the Left?
The situation is much
more subtle when it comes to the Left. The hypocrisy is well hidden behind the
good-will of the Leftists. This good-will takes the form of “self-criticism”
here. The Left loves and rejoices in criticizing itself, i.e., the West. There
is a striking similarity here with the Right: while the Right falls in love
with the image of itself, the Left is seduced by the flaws in this image. The
former loves the beauty of itself, the latter loves the ugliness of itself, for
the beauty cannot be criticized.
This will to criticize
is yet another form of European ego, but this time, it talks not only for those
who claim to be European, but, for everyone around the world, from the farmer
working in a rice field in Asia to the fisherman in a village in the Middle
East.
The Left loves to
announce: “this is all because of the West!” Notice how everything Other has
been eliminated from the picture. Everything is because of the West. “How ugly
we are, and yet how seductive this ugliness is that we cannot do anything but
criticize.” If there is a problem in this world, it should be “our” problem. If
there is a responsibility for all the evil in the World, it has to be “us.”
Discern the obsession
here, the masochistic pleasure of being ugly, the same enormous European ego
that has been turned upside down. It is hard to decide if the Left in fact
desires a solution at all; or if it rather indulges in the problems. With its
“Grand Theories” in its inventory, ingenious eclectic capabilities and superior
logic, it relishes being the one who develops yet another magnificent piece of
explanation of what is wrong with the world, what is wrong with “us”.
The Left is a site for
one-man shows. It seems to me that the people suffering in the Middle East are
received by the Left with a sly smile as yet more material that they can
deconstruct, psychoanalyze; and show the world how brilliant they are in their
analyses.
Just like with the
Right, in this picture too one cannot encounter the Other. The Leftists would
disagree here, they would claim “’we’ are
the ones who support the rights of Muslims and all Others. Furthermore ‘we’
already are listening to Muslim intellectuals and the Third World.”
But notice again the
twofold sense of the word “we” here. The question, on the other hand, is not if
Muslims can talk. The whole world is waiting for them to talk, for them to say
something, anything. And, indeed they talk. If what they say is not
intelligible or does not bring any change, the problem lies somewhere else.
The subject here is not
Muslims; for not all non-westerners have to be that or this. There is “more”
than what Europe wants to see in the Middle East. Let me put it even more
simply: not everybody who was thrown into the Middle East has to be a Muslim,
or, to be crushed under European confession. The non-European European is not
the Other that the Left supports and communicates with; it is the Left itself,
it is Europe itself. An insidious exclusion is at play here.
Let me illustrate the
problem with a metaphor. Imagine that Europe is a cottage. A small, beautiful
cottage. The non-European European is doomed to hover over it. Whenever she
gets too close to the door, the Leftist comes out (not the Rightist!) with a
friendly smile on his face. He stands next to her, puts his arm on her shoulder
and begins to tell her how ugly in fact this cottage is! How cruel, how merciless,
how brutal, how savage… He explains to her one by one – and he explains quite well
– why she should never ever desire to go inside. He convinces her and after
ensuring that she has returned to her purposeless wandering, with a smile, he
goes back inside.
Yet, she is stubborn,
stubborn to exist. She comes back to the door, and in the blink of an eye, the
Leftist appears next to her again. He starts repeating himself; she interrupts
him and insists, “but I want to see! I belong there!”
Then things get serious.
The hospitality of the Leftist suddenly turns into a restive hostility; he
begins with accusations: “You are Islamophobic, you are a neo-liberal, you do
not respect difference. How could you desire to be like us? Are you sick?”
The “Europeanness” of
the non-European, this eagerness to be a part of the ugliness, is what the Left
cannot bear. It loves to hate itself, it has dissolved so hard in its love that
it cannot share the slightest part of it. If someone will hate himself, it can
be no one but the European. Let the Leftist hate himself also for you, for all
humanity. You should not be contaminated by the West. “We” spare you, run as
fast as you can, let us tackle this enormous problem; after all, “we” created
this: it is all “us.” Hence, the non-European European does not, cannot exist
for the Left. In its obsession with the beauty of its ugliness, the European
Left is one of the most conservative constituencies of Europe. The hypocrisy
here, as with everything else the Left does, is “impressive.” It denies the
existence of the Other for the sake of the Other while celebrating its own existence.
This is how similar the Left and Right become in the face of the non-European
Europeans.
In short, it is indeed
correct that everything that happens in the world is about the West. But the
West is not only about the West. Being European is no longer a geographical
destiny. It is rather a form of life beyond ethnicity, religion, skin color, or
sex; it is a peculiar ontology that is open to everybody, that is an
achievement of world history.
The non-European
Europeans are the culmination of this fact. The concept itself is a
contradiction that conveys the collapse of any essentialist claim.
The non-European
European is not an autonomous puppet that the “genuine European” keeps close to
itself in order to remind itself of its own superiority. It is as “European” as
anyone who claims to be so without feeling any obligation to show its
gratitude. There is no generosity of “original Europeans” here. Nor is the non-European
European a puppet who has to wait for its great European masters to cut its
ropes and set it free. It can speak for itself, the whole drama unfolds around her
or him; it can and must criticize itself. It also has responsibilities, freedom
and morality.
Hence,
the non-European Europeans exist, whether Europe likes it or not. And if Europe
wants to change anything at all, it should start acknowledging this fact and
recognize their existence
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