Hospitable Otherness

For a renewed rapprochement with Europe

Abstract

This article underlines the “sovereign moment” characteristic of the current phase of European Union integration. In reality, the predominance of national interests over the European framework has, from the beginning, been a thorn in the side. Nevertheless, today a new dynamic is underway. Fault lines (such as North/South or East/West) are again re-emerging in Europe in the form of “polarized introversion.” We are not yet witnessing the demise of democracy in the strict sense but we are in a subtler way seeing its decline or hollowing out. Outwardly, Europe is stuck in a syndrome of “reticent extroversion”, implying its inability to transform the “neighborhood policy” into an authentic “policy of proximity.” There is an “implicit” and undeclared secession of European citizens from the union; the detachment concerns not so much the institutions, but the policies, which, at times, are perceived not only as inadequate but even as hostile. The center of the European crisis lies not in its unwillingness to welcome others (the immigrants, the refugees, the marginalized) but in its having “unlearned” the virtue of mutual hospitality. Indeed, the political history of contemporary Europe can be narrated entirely from the perspective of “xenopolitics” that is from the point of view of being rejected or of trying to draw near to one another.