Interview with Roberto Esposito: What Future for Europe?

MICROMEGA - IL RASOIO DI OCCAM 

[With Marco Piasentier]

Roberto Esposito is Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Italy. Until 2013, he was Vice Director of the Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane, Full Professor of Theoretical Philosophy, and the coordinator of the doctoral program in philosophy. For five years, he was the only Italian member of the International Council of Scholars of the Collège International de Philosophie in Paris. He is the author of many books including 'Communitas: The Origin and Destiny of Community' (Stanford University Press, 2004), 'Bios: Biopolitics and Philosophy' (Minnesota University Press, 2008), 'Immunitas: The Protection and Negation of Life' (Polity Press, 2011), 'Third Person: Politics of Life and Philosophy of the Impersonal' (Polity Press, 2012), 'Living Thought: The Origins and Actuality of Italian Philosophy' (Stanford University Press, 2012) and 'Two: The Machine of Political Theology and the Place of Thought' (Fordham University Press, 2015).

Your recent book From Outside: A Philosophy for Europe seems to be located at the intersection of two axes: on the one hand, it looks at European philosophies; on the other hand, it explores the idea of a philosophy for Europe. The point of intersection between these two vectors could be the following question: what role should philosophy play in the current debate on Europe?

If you think about it, in the most dramatic moments of its history Europe has always turned to philosophy and, in turn, philosophy has interrogated itself about the destiny of Europe as something that touches its very essence. Why? Which bond holds inseparably together philosophy and Europe? A preliminary answer to this question concerns the European – especially Greek – birth of philosophy. While it was nourished by other traditions of thought, the European connotation marked philosophy indelibly. Even the line of thought that has assumed the name of “analytic philosophy,” curiously opposed by some to “continental philosophy,” was born in our continent and only subsequently, fleeing Nazism, emigrated elsewhere. But there is something more; something that pertains to the philosophical character of the very constitution of Europe. Not possessing definite geographical boundaries, at least in the East – its distinction from Asia is problematic, considering that two large countries, Russia and Turkey, stretch between the two continents –, Europe, from the beginning, has defined itself from the perspective of the constitutive specificity of its philosophical principles: the freedom of the Greek cities as opposed to the Asian despotic regimes. Although these principles were often contradicted and reversed into their opposite, the idea of Europe is inseparable from them.

The fact is that philosophy has been a decisive source of inspiration in all the great crises that Europe has faced. It has been so in the time that preceded the fall of the Roman Empire, when Augustine of Hippo delineated the features of a new spiritual civilization; in the age of religious wars, when Descartes and Hobbes established the principles of modern science and politics; and at the turn of the French Revolution, interpreted by Kant and Hegel as an event destined to change the history of the world. Finally, it has been so in the deeply philosophical clash between totalitarianism and democracy. If all this is true, why not imagine, even in the crisis that we are currently experiencing, that philosophy can offer Europe, if not a solution to the current crisis, at least a new way of seeing things, a different direction to take? Of course philosophy is not able to impose its own choices on politics, let alone on the economy. Nonetheless, it can help to identify the role of Europe in the global world and the principles that should inform its conduct.

Your book proposes a genealogical analysis of the history of European philosophy in the late twentieth century, identifying three geo-philosophical articulations that develop between them a complex twine of overlays, hegemonic conflicts and cross-references: German critical theory, French post-structuralism, and Italian thought. Each of these theoretical paradigms has reached full development and dissemination through a passage to the outside, a hybridization with what is other than itself. At the same time, however, the crucial distinction between these different ‘philosophical streams’ depends precisely on the relationship they have established with the outside. How does the thematization of the outside vary? And what do its different assumptions entail for the philosophical relevance of these three theoretical horizons?

In the book, the “outside” is understood in its geographical connotation – the Northwest Passage to America – but also in a disciplinary sense, alluding to what does not strictly belong to philosophical self-reflection but to other languages, like those of politics, sociology, and anthropology. Moreover, it can be argued that thought itself always originates from the outside, as Averroes had already realized, for he describes the “possible intellect” as a “separate” and “impersonal competence.” If we think about it, all great discoveries and paradigm shifts are always stimulated by an external event. In what I have called “German Philosophy” – referring to the Frankfurt School, which emigrated to America with the advent of Nazism – the philosophical “outside” is essentially represented by the “social,” but also, especially for Adorno, by art. In his Negative Dialectics – perhaps the last great philosophical work of the 20th century – Adorno refers to the non-conceptual element internal to the concept, thus creating a rigorously ‘negative’ theory of thought. Regarding “French Theory” – which also passed through America, where it has had its consecration – we should distinguish between a Heideggerian line of thinking represented by Derrida, and a Nietzschean one, which can be traced back to Foucault and Deleuze. For Derrida, the “outside” is essentially writing, which he dialectically opposes to the word, the logos. Foucault, however, holds a more radical idea of the “outside,” meaning by this notion, on the one hand, the sphere of power, of the real power relations inherent in every discourse and, on the other, the dimension of biological life, as opposed to spiritual interiority, over which humans never have full mastery. As for Italian philosophy – whose origin dates back to Machiavelli – the “outside” is essentially the dimension of the political, thought of as something external to the State. In short, from all points of view and despite all the differences just mentioned, the “outside” constitutes the horizon of meaning and the vital energy of our practice and thought.

The book can be seen as a continuation of your recent work Living Thought. The Origins and Actuality of Italian Philosophy (Stanford University Press), devoted to Italian philosophy. In the reconstruction of its different stages, what appears to distinguish Italian thought – from Machiavelli to Vico, from Leopardi and Gramsci up to its most recent developments – is the theme of conflict, the relationship that this thought establishes between origin and actuality, thus offering a more adequate articulation of ontology and politics. How does Italian thought articulate this relationship?

In effect, From Outside forms a sort of diptych with Living Thought. While the latter is devoted to Italian philosophy, From Outside is focused on European philosophy, with the exception of the English tradition, which has long been oriented toward the Atlantic axis. From Outside also discusses “Italian theory,” or rather “Italian thought,” by placing it in a differential relationship with German and French thought. The theme of conflict, in its various meanings, constantly returns in Italian philosophy, from Machiavelli to Gramsci, up to Operaismo [Workerism] in the 60s. The fundamental idea that underlies our tradition is that political order does not eliminate conflict, as Hobbes believed, but is indeed entirely crossed by it. It is an idea that is also found in German authors such as Nietzsche, and French ones, like Foucault. But we can say that the dialectic of order and conflict – their co-belonging – is a distinguishing trait of Italian thought.

The relation between origin and actuality, although connected to the dialectic of order and conflict, is a different matter. It is has to do with the conception of history as perpetual crisis, rather than progressive development. The origin of this conception lies in Vico’s work, as can be deduced from the idea underlying his New Science [Scienza Nuova], based precisely on a continuous alternation of recurring cycles [“corsi” and “ricorsi”]. But even Machiavelli believed that when a political organization loses contact with its origin, it declines and risks implosion. After all, if actuality could coincide fully with itself, if it were not inhabited by an element irreducible to it, it would ultimately remain blind to itself. It would lack a critical counterpoint through which to deconstruct its perspective. In the most recent Italian philosophy, categories and terms derived from the archaic tradition, both Greek and Latin, such as sacertas, imperium, communitas, have played a significant role in the international debate. Indeed, the notion of ‘contemporaneity’ is to be understood not merely as the age that follows the modern one, but rather, as the co-presence, in every age, of different and conflicting times – something that, if radically thought, ends up calling into question the very paradigm of “epoch,” the entire epochal economy.

Biopolitics is a recurring term in your work and in your latest book. In it, the European crisis is not only conceptualized as a purely economic or politico-institutional crisis, but also as a bio-political one, since it affects the very life of Europeans. In particular, the increase in migratory flows and terrorist attacks represent two paradigmatic figures of the crisis on the continent. These phenomena reveal an overlap between inside and outside, thus challenging the nexus, which has been taken for granted, between population, territory, and processes of identification. If we look at the legal responses to these crises put in place by the EU and its member states, what emerges is the reactive nature of norms and their casuistic logic. More specifically, regarding the measures to prevent and combat terrorism, intervention has been characterized by a widening of the thresholds of protection and punishment. How it is possible to “disable the apparatuses of negative immunization, and to enable new spaces of the common,” as you put it in your article, published in Angelaki, “Community, Immunity, Biopolitics”? How do you conceive these spaces, this dimension of the common? And how would it be possible to prevent a deactivation of the apparatuses of control from turning into a form of isolation?

The thesis presented in the book is that the current crisis affecting the whole world, and especially Europe, is not just economic or politico-institutional, but also more dramatically bio-political, since it involves and endangers the biological life of large numbers of human beings. In fact, the effects of the economic crisis have already begun to manifest their thanatopolitical implications to the extent that they have pushed entire populations to the brink of starvation, as was particularly evident in Greece and in the other weakest links of the EU. Moreover, the escalation of Islamic terrorism, on the one hand, and the uncontrollable rise of migration, on the other — in turn caused largely by wars for which the responsibility of Western countries is undeniable — have radically intensified the bio-thanatopolitical character of the crisis. For the first time, the European population is subjected to a pressure that will change profoundly its characteristics, and our ruling classes are not able to deal with the situation, not even to perceive its import. Nowadays, in dealing with immigration, they have to face a decisive biopolitical decision: the extreme choice between keeping alive or abandoning to death a growing number of human beings.

As a matter of fact, European countries have mostly adopted an immunitarian strategy, designed to strengthen or build barriers capable of containing the migratory influx that is often, even intentionally, confused with the risk of terrorism. Certainly, the existence of the EU’s external borders is not only inevitable, but also somehow essential — otherwise the Union would no longer exist. Indeed, the opening of its internal borders, established by the Schengen Agreement, which is today called into question, is only possible if the external borders are monitored. But it is completely unrealistic to believe that this would be enough to handle the question of immigration, especially if a number of policies adequate to the importance and extent of the problem are not put in place.

Your trilogy — Communitas, Immunitas, Bíos — redefines the issue of inclusion/exclusion in light of the immunization paradigm. To simplify a little, you identify three possible ways of understanding the relationship between inside/outside. On the one hand, there is a dynamics of hyper-immunization activated by the raising of barriers and the intensification of identity politics. On the other hand, a complete absence of immunization spurred by the abolition of all borders and the subsequent loss of identity. Both possibilities are considered politically unacceptable because they cause the annihilation of the body politic (in the first case identity is so self-enclosed that it ends up smothering itself; in the second case it is so open that it ends up dissolving itself). Finally, the third option proposes a form of immunization by means of ‘contamination’, which both enriches and strengthens identities. This logic of inclusion/exclusion seems to be a bio-logic, as it anchors its ontology in the functioning of the immune system. If German critical theory and French post-structuralism were characterized by a progressive politicization of biology, showing the historico-political character of any definition of the human being, what relation does Italian thought establish between politics and biological life? How would it be possible to avoid both a politicization of biology and a biologization of politics?

As a matter of fact, this is precisely the twofold risk to which Europe, but generally any political and even biological organism, is exposed. The first risk is that of an autoimmune disease — i.e., a process of immunization so strong that it affects the very organism that produced it, eventually ending up by destroying itself. What I mean is that an excess of security apparatuses may constitute a danger in itself, as has often happened in European history. But also the opposite attitude is self-contradictory. The complete abolition of borders, instead of strengthening differences, ends up dissolving them in a total homogenization. Only if taken together, can identity and difference be productive. Drawing on biological dynamics, in my book Immunitas I have indicated a path toward a different interpretation of the category of immunization. In this regard, the decisive reference is to the phenomenon of pregnancy. As is well known, the female immune system not only does not reject a foreign element (the fetus, which takes on genetic foreignness from the father) but it also protects and develops the embryo, even though the DNA of the fetus is partly different from her own. If it were possible to apply the same logic — the logic of life — to international relations, things would be much better.

The twofold process of the politicization of biology and the biologization of politics is the outcome of the bio-political dynamics set in motion at the beginning of the twentieth century. On the one hand, it represents a necessity determined by a number of historical, even cultural factors — e.g., the development of the discipline of biology. On the other hand, if left to its own devices, it constitutes a danger. This process, which cannot be avoided, as Nietzsche knew well, should instead be kept under control, since it can easily take thanatopolitical forms, as happened in the most disastrous manner during the Nazi era. In the mid-70s, Michel Foucault was the first to grasp in its full extent both the affirmative and negative sides of this phenomenon. Italian philosophers have worked on the Foucauldian paradigm, developing it in a different direction. Some have insisted on the positive character of the relationship between politics and biological life, while others have emphasized its negative aspects. Personally, I have tried to articulate the biopolitical paradigm in respect to that of immunization, reaching the conclusions that I mentioned earlier. If the processes of the politicization of biology — such as biotechnological practices aimed at controlling and managing births and deaths — and the biologization of politics cannot be stopped, they should at least be governed.

In the final part of the book From Outside, you discuss the widespread criticism that the EU lacks legitimacy and suffers from a profound democratic deficit. Contrary to what is imagined by those who expected the spread of supranational forms of identification, we are witnessing a strengthening of national and regional identities: the success of Eurosceptic or anti-European parties and positions slows down the process of constituting a European political subject. The results of the Brexit referendum or the threat by Austria to close its borders with Italy are just recent examples. The EU seems to lack a project that favors a strong identification among its citizens. In your book, you explicitly refer to the notion of ‘European people’. What are the philosophical and historical conditions that may lead to the emergence of this political subject? How does democracy fit in with the picture so far presented?

The ‘identity syndromes’ and the construction of exclusionary barriers, like the results of the Brexit referendum and Austrian nationalism, are the pathological reactions triggered by the dynamics of globalization. Indeed, they are a form of rejection of the ‘global contamination.’ They are very similar to the autoimmune disease of which we spoke earlier. Naturally, these phenomena not only delay the process of European unification, but jeopardize it, disrupting the integration that has already taken place. And this makes the constitution of a European people all but impossible. Unlike many European countries — such as France, Germany, Italy and many others, whose peoples were formed in parallel with the process of nation-building on the basis of common ideas, languages, and challenges — Europe does not have only one people. Furthermore, the peoples of the various European nations have furiously fought each other until the middle of the last century. In a Europe dominated by the worst nationalist instincts, how could a European people possibly have been born? Of course, as Habermas has argued, the people does not need to be a traditional Volk. It could also constitute itself voluntarily, on the basis of common values and interests, as Europe has tried to do at the end of World War II. But this would require a series of objective and cultural bonds, such as a single language or a common media network, which is exactly what is missing.

How can we get to the bottom of this difficult situation? The decision to prioritize economy, which led to the adoption of the single currency in most EU countries, turned out to be both insufficient and counterproductive, to the extent that it is creating more problems than it solves. The process is now irreversible. For, historically, all U-turns are harbingers of more problems to come. But the negative consequences of financial integration not supported by a political unity are there for all to see. The only way that seems to me to be open is the political construction of a European people. However, this presupposes a harsh confrontation between two ideas of Europe that run across individual nations, which are themselves divided by too many different living conditions to be unified a priori. In this regard, in the book, I refer to the need for a social conflict that restores political strength to the European constituting process. After all, as Hegel pointed out, conflict, if kept within the limits of political confrontation and struggle, has always had a constituent function.