Euregionaal Forum22 april 2009 – 17:58

The unresolved borders of Europe
href="http://bordersofeurope.janvaneyck.nl">http://bordersofeurope.janvaneyck.nl

— lecture series with Lieven De Cauter (7 May), Saskia Sassen (13 May) and Etienne Balibar (28 May)
— introduced and moderated by BAVO (Gideon Boie and Matthias Pauwels)
— venue: NAiMaastricht / Bureau Europa, Avenue Ceramique 226, Maastricht, NL

‘The unresolved borders of Europe’ is a lecture series focused on the borders and border regions of Europe. It invites some international renowned scholars from different disciplines to engage with the idea that the internal and external borders of Europe are not marginal to the constitution of a European public sphere but are, on the contrary, at its centre.

The lecture series is organised by the Euregional Forum, in collaboration with the Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht and NAiM / Bureau Europa, Maastricht.

The lecture series continues in Autumn 2009 with lectures by Chantal Mouffe, Antonio Negri, Paul Scheffer and a film seminar with Ann-Sofi Siden and Raphael Cuomo & Maria Iorio.

Admission free
To attend the lectures please register at: info@bureau-europa.nl or +31 43 3503020.

Thursday 7 May
20:00
Welcome
20:05
BAVO
introduction
20:15
Lieven De Cauter
The seams of the world (revisiting the capsular civilisation)
21:15
discussion
21:45
closing comments
In his lecture, Lieven De Cauter will talk about his recent visits to the extreme places that featured prominently in his book The Capsular Civilisation (2004). He will first talk about his trip to the heavily protected wall of Ceuta, the Spanish city on the North African side of the Strait of Gibraltar. The wall featured prominently on the cover of De Cauter’s book and is considered as the most visible defence dispositive of Fortress Europe. Next, he will talk about his visit to Palestine and his trip to the fence between Tijuana and San Diego, both of which De Cauter regards as laboratories for the spatial order of the 21st century. The talk will revisit these places, which he regards as the seams of our seemingly ostensibly network society. He will do this by presenting images and texts, recollections and diary fragments, in short: bits and pieces of his travels to the dark side of our European and global landscape.

Lieven De Cauter (°1959) studied Philosophy and History of Art. He teaches philosophy of culture at the Department of Architecture at Leuven University (Leuven, BE), the media school RITS (Brussels, BE), dance academy P.A.R.T.S. (Brussels, BE) and the Berlage Institute (Rotterdam, NL). He has published several books on contemporary art, experience and modernity, on Walter Benjamin and, more recently, on architecture, the city and politics. He has also published poems, columns, statements, pamphlets and articles in newspapers and on the worldwide web. His latest book is The Capsular Civilisation. On the city in the age of fear (2004). In 2008 he (and Michiel Dehaene) edited Heterotopia and the City. Public space in a postcivil society. De Cauter was initiator of The BRussells Tribunal on ‘The Project for the New American Century’ and its responsibilities in the invasion of Iraq (www.brusselstribunal.org). He is also co-founder of the ‘Platform for Liberty of Expression’, an organisation that fights antiterrorism legislation and recent attacks on free speech and activism in Belgium. De Cauter lives and works in Brussels.

Wednesday 13 May
19:00
welcome
19:05
BAVO
introduction
19:15
Saskia Sassen
Emergent third spaces: novel assemblages of territory, authority and rights
20:15
discussion
20:45
closing comments

Saskia Sassen’s lecture will be based on her book Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages (2006). This book deals with the emergence of new assemblages of bits of territory, authority and rights that used to be fully encompassed by the nation-state, but today exit the institutional, though not the geographic settings of the nation-state. Global cities, active border zones with complex social ecologies, trans-local activist networks focused on very local issues ­ these are all complex assemblages that are neither global nor national. Sassen considers the EU as one of the most developed and formalised of such instances, with its multiplication of internal ‘third spaces’. In her lecture, Sassen will show how traditional institutions for membership, citizenship and alienage are unsettled by these assemblages. She will locate interesting potentials for rethinking membership as well as radically different concepts of governance and democracy.

Saskia Sassen (°1949) is the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology at Columbia University. She is also a Centennial Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics. Her research and writing focuses on globalisation (including social, economic and political dimensions), immigration, global cities (including cities and terrorism), the new networked technologies, and changes within the liberal state that result from current transnational conditions. Her three major books are: The Mobility of Labor and Capital (Cambridge University Press 1988), The Global City (Princeton University Press 1991; 2nd ed 2002) and Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages (Princeton University Press 2006). Her most recent book is A Sociology of Globalization (Norton 2007). She also formed part of the so-called Group of Lisbon and co-authored its programmatic book Limits to Competition (MIT Press, 1996).

Thursday 28 May
20:00
welcome
20:05
BAVO
introduction
20:15
Etienne Balibar
Ideas of Europe: civilization and constitution
21:15
discussion
21:45
closing comments

In his lecture, Etienne Balibar will expand on the main theses of his important book We, the People of Europe? Reflections on Transnational Citizenship (2004). The latter offers a trenchant analysis of transnational citizenship from the perspective of contemporary Europe. His main thesis is that although European unification has progressively divorced the concepts of citizenship and nationhood, this process has met with formidable obstacles. Balibar perceives the emergence of a ‘European apartheid’, alongside the formal aspects of European citizenship, as well as the reduplication of external borders in the form of ‘internal borders’ nurtured by dubious notions of national and racial identity. Balibar’s lecture will move deftly from state theory, national sovereignty, debates on multiculturalism, Europe's racism and the debacle with its constitution toward imagining a more democratic and less state-centred European citizenship

Etienne Balibar (°1942) is currently Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris-X. As one of Louis Althusser's most brilliant students in the 1960s, Etienne Balibar contributed to the collective theoretical masterpiece of Reading Capital. Since then he has established himself amongst the most subtle philosophical and political thinkers in France. He has worked extensively on general problematics such as the theme of universalism and difference. He has also addressed such topical questions as European racism, the notion of the border, whether a European citizenship is possible or desirable, violence and politics, identity and emancipation. His books include Reading Capital (with Louis Althusser, New Left Books 1970), Race, Nation, Class (with Immanuel Wallerstein, Verso 1991), The Philosophy of Marx, Spinoza and Politics, Politics and the Other Scene (Verso 2002), and We, the People of Europe? Reflections on Transnational Citizenship (Princeton University Press 2004).

More info:
Madeleine Bisscheroux
Anne Vangrondsveld
coordinators public programme and events
Jan van Eyck Academie
Academieplein 1
6211 KM Maastricht
Netherlands
e coordinator.events@janvaneyck.nl
t +31 (0)43 350 37 29
f +31 (0)43 350 37 59
w www.janvaneyck.nl