Freedom of the Border. Paul Scheffer
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from ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’ in C. P. CAVAFY: Collected Poems, Revised Edition translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, edited by George Savidis, reproduced by kind permission of Princeton University Press.
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ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4090-7 – hardback
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4091-4 – paperback
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Scheffer, Paul, author.
Title: Freedom of the border / Paul Scheffer ; translated by Liz Waters.
Other titles: Vorm van vrijheid. English
Description: Cambridge, UK ; Medford, MA : Polity Press, 2021. | Translation of: De vorm van vrijheid. | includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: "A defence of the meaning and function of borders and their necessity in the face of authoritarian attitudes to multiculturalism"-- Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020026134 (print) | LCCN 2020026135 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509540907 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509540914 (paperback) | ISBN 9781509540921 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Globalization--Philosophy. | Europe--Boundaries.
Classification: LCC D1058 S34413 2021 (print) | LCC D1058 (ebook) | DDC 320.1/2--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020026134
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020026135
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Acknowledgements
In the summer of 2015 I was asked to write an essay for Philosophy Month, which occurs annually in the Netherlands. With images of the refugee crisis in mind, I chose ‘dealing with borders’ as my theme. The essay was published the following spring under the title ‘The Freedom of the Border’. It prompted many reactions, which set me thinking further on the subject. A long series of readings and public debates sharpened my ideas. This book is the result.
Here I have taken the original text of that essay as my starting point. I’ve expanded the original chapters and added six more. In various places I’ve freely made use of earlier publications and lectures. More specifically, I’ve used the Pacification Lecture that I gave in Ghent in 2012 and a lecture at the University of Tilburg from 2014. I’ve also drawn upon my contribution to a book about the shooting down of flight MH17.
The issue of borders is to the fore, so the essay form is no accidental choice. The genre lends itself beautifully to the crossing of borders. Overcoming the division of labour between disciplines, which José Ortega y Gasset once called ‘the barbarism of specialization’, is essential if you want to say anything useful about dealing with borders. Without specialists, generalists are powerless, so here too we have to take dividing lines seriously. Furthermore, such an undertaking is of course risky, since nobody can encompass such diverse disciplines, but a broad view remains necessary if we are to find a direction in a chaotic world.
I am grateful to John Thompson and Elise Heslinga of Polity for their willingness to publish another book of mine, after Immigrant Nations. And I would like to thank Liz Waters, who translated this book with great care and patience. She also translated my previous book with Polity and the cooperation proved to be, once more, a real pleasure.
Notes
1 1 Paul Scheffer, De grenzen van Europa, Brussels, Academia Press, 2012.
2 2 Paul Scheffer, ‘De gewelddadige randen van het continent: Europa tussen macht en moraal’, in Gabriël van den Brink (ed.), Een ramp die Nederland veranderde? Nadenken over vlucht MH17, Amsterdam, Boom, 2015, pp. 29–57.
3 3 See José Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses, transl. Anon., New York, W. W. Norton, 1932, ch. XII, pp. 107ff. (originally published as La rebelión de las masas, 1930).
Introduction: Exploring boundaries
I was eighteen when I first stood at the Wall that cut Berlin in two. In the summer of 1973, as one of my country’s representatives at the World Festival of Youth and Students, I saw at first hand the ghostly tableau of the East German side. We were housed at the edge of the city and from my window I could see the watchtowers and searchlights at the Wall a short distance away. Its official name was the Antifaschistischer Schutzwall, the Antifascist Protection Rampart, but in reality it had been built to prevent East German citizens from leaving.
One Sunday morning sixteen years later I watched as an excavator removed its first segment of the Wall at the Potsdamer Platz, three days after that historic 9 November 1989 when the Wall fell.1 A huge crowd thronged the square. I leaned on the shoulder of a smiling border guard to get a better view. For twenty-eight years this former traffic intersection at the heart of the city had been an impassable barrier. Now no-man’s-land was filling up with a cheerful multitude, and together we experienced the beginnings of a new vision of the old continent.
I well remember the sense of relief in the years that followed the end of the Cold War. At last we were rid of the Iron Curtain that had divided Europe so brutally. The oppression of the Eastern part of the continent was over and the ‘peace dividend’ was quickly cashed in. Major cuts to defence expenditure became possible, with worries about territorial integrity and border security resolved. After 1989 everything was going to be different.
Now, more than thirty years later, we again find ourselves talking endlessly about borders. The influx of refugees provokes emotional responses. There is apparent agreement about the need to improve the security of Europe’s external borders, but still no sign of a real determination to act. In fact European division on this point is greater than ever, partly as a result of moral diffidence: on what grounds can we deny others the right to settle in our part of the world?
This book is about the open society and its borders. I’ve always been suspicious of the notion that we live in a borderless world. It’s a self-image that betokens a rather inward-looking attitude. Because what is left to be discovered if there’s no outside world? The value of crossing borders can be understood only by those willing to acknowledge their significance.
My approach to the issue has been shaped in part by the history of my own family. One