Summary of Work Group 1 2010 MEETING
WG1 2010: Borders
Second Work Group 1 meeting
8-9 April 2010, Berlin (Germany)
Convenors:
Rozita Dimova
rozita@zedat.fu-berlin.de
+49-30-6677-9745
Christian Voss
christian.voss@staff.hu-berlin.de
+ 49-30-2093-5185
Topic: Borders, Materiality, Signification
The meeting in Berlin combined the Fourth Management Committee meeting of the action (10 April 2010) with the second meeting of the WG1 (Borders, 8-9 April 2010). Following the recommendations from the MC conclusions reached in Brussels in January 2010, this meeting placed the main stress on discussion and requested each presenter to pre-circulate his/her paper 10 days before the meeting. Each paper was given a half-an-hour slot in which the author, in ten minutes, presented (or rather summarized) his/her main ideas. In the following ten minutes an assigned discussant commented on the paper (thus each participant was assigned a double role: as a presenter and discussant). The last ten minutes were devoted to questions from the other participants in the meeting. Based on the abstracts, the conveners identified complementary topics, and grouped the presentations into clusters with specific headings. This pre-arranged thematic agenda had an intention to ground and direct the discussion by isolating theoretical concepts that would add new perspectives to the general topic of borders.
At the beginning the convener Christian Voss greeted the participants and explained the historical significance of the room where the meeting was taking place -- the so-called advisory room of the former GDR where the highest intellectual debates and decisions were taking place related not only to academia but to larger state politics. Given the delay at the beginning of the meeting, Rozita Dimova’s hasty introduction sketched the intention of the meeting to assess the notions of borders’ visibility, materiality and multiple significations during and after radical regime changes. The introductory remarks ended with an emphasis on the main aim of this meeting to go beyond the binaries between material/immaterial or visible/invisible, but rather to think about materiality through Ranciere’s notion of “the distribution of the sensible” in which sense perception simultaneously discloses the existence of something in common but also delimits the distinctive parts and positions within the common (Rancière 2004). Rozita Dimova also emphasized the strength of Benjamin’s approach to materiality as a spatially and temporally situated “force” that can reveal the limits of (interpretation of) history as a legitimizing academic and ideological faculty, but that can also challenge “the mythic immediacy of the present by treating it as a culmination of a cultural continuum” (Morss-Buck 1986:4; Benjamin 1999). This approach applied to border’s materiality could offer a conceptual ground on which we can talk about time/space, visibility and material presence of a border.
The beginning of the workshop was preceded by a summary of the previously-held EastbordNet meetings (Sarah Green – Manchester and Brno; Tuija Pulkinnen – Helsinki; Katharina Tyran – Ljubljana and the first photography project in Lithvania; Renata Jambrisic Kirin – Zagreb; Jeanne Kormina – Belfast; Michaela Schäuble – Rome). The working part of the meeting started with Olga Demetriou’s summary of the Nicosia meeting that was conceptualized around the question of division and critiques of duality. More specifically, the first WG1 meeting in Nicosia attempted to analyze ways in which singularity and multiplicity had been related to each other across theoretical strands, and how borders had been used to signify duality across theoretical traditions, across different idioms of sameness and difference, separation and connection, unity and multiplicity.
The first panel consisted of the presentations by Dmitry Nechipurak and Jeanne Kormina whose papers discussed the issues of "cleanness," pollution (environmental and metaphorical), as well as sanctity and religiosity, especially in relation to Russia. Dmitry Nechipourak discussed the tensions emerging between environmental and political borders among (and within) the Baltic independent states (once former Soviet republics), and Russia since 1991. The once common frame agreement reached in 1974 to protect the Baltic Sea from pollution, which relied on an explicit division between the Soviet block and the West, became invalid with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and especially with the EU accession of the Baltic countries, and thus blurred the once clear-cut borders. Jeanne Kormina discussed the processes of resacularization taking place in the post-soviet Russian society where post-Soviet orthodox believers combine Soviet and post-Soviet experiences by borrowing Soviet and secular elements from the past into their current religious everyday life. As an illustration Jeanne Kormina used the appearance of Iosif Stalin in hagiography (and in icon painted in 2008) of recently canonized female saint Matrona which has become an issue for vivid public discussion in different parts of the Russian society. The discussants of the papers, Hani Zubida and Carola Häntsch, as well as the other participants in the general discussion raised the question of religious and imperial legacies combined with contemporary configurations of power and governmentality.
The second panel of the WG1 meeting entitled “Borderliness“ of Non-Citizens included three speakers. Sevasti Trubeta’s paper „Reception Centres for Unaccompanied Minor Refugees: ‘Dead Zones’, ‘Stopovers’ and ‘Bridges’” addressed the topic of child asylum seekers in Lesbos who become subjects of „non-status“, and gather protection based on a paradoxical humanitarian idea of philanthropic tolerance. In the discussion with Stef Jansen she pointed out that this practice is indicative of a much larger discourse on "humanitarianism" related to the question of EU and non-Eu borders. The Greek state does not invest significant efforts to provide a long-term resolution for this problem, but displaces the "burden" to other agents and NGO agencies. Ivana Juriši? presented her PhD work in progress on integration and exclusion of Muslim immigrant women in the German Society. She provided a general overview of immigration and integration issues in Germany, pointing out that the German state expected the immigrants to adjust themselves without a comprehensive assistance of the state. Such stance has, in fact, led to stronger ties with their national and religious communities, as they have not been accepted by the majority society. And yet, Ivana Juriši?'s main argument is that the role of Muslim women in Berlin is crucial and critical in the process of “integration” in the German society. Hani Zubida's talk “In or Out? – Migrant Workers in Israel – The Citizenship Dilemma” addressed the notion of citizenship, its importance in identity issues which can serve as a tool of inclusion and/or exclusion. Hani Zubida presented a broad insight into his personal work with migrant workers in Israel and the state authorities. The discussant Lenio Myrivili raised several questions about the concepts of nation states and how they are forced to deal with symbolic boundaries. This topic was furthermore elaborated in the following general discussion (with Olga Demetriou as a facilitator). The participants identified two important issues: the issue of children as a returning matter in all three presentations, and religion, which has not been addressed in previous Work Groups or Work Shops.
The panel “Legacies of Memory and Interpretation” addressed the cultural politics of memory after radical regime and border changes. Carola Häntsch’s presentation “’Das eine war nicht völlig schwarz, das andere ist nicht völlig weiß’. The struggle for the ‘power of interpretation’ (Deutungshoheit) discussed the place of German history since 1989 after the German reunification. The public and scientific debates about the political character of the former GDR, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the process of reunification range from severe delegitimation of the East German state as a “state of injustice” (Unrechtsstaat) to different forms of “ostalgy” (Ostalgie), a glorification of the former GDR as a social idyll. Carola Häntsch argued that this diversity of interpretation should be analysed on several levels: on the level of everyday day practice, the level of concrete political and social debates, the level of scientific discourse, and the meta-level of philosophy of history. Focussing on the scientific discourse, she pointed out that the East German perspective is often marginalised. There is an unequal distribution of power in the domains of denomination and terminology referring to interpretation of historical events, as well as the concepts of “reunification” (Wiedervereinigung) with a positive connotation, and “annexation” (Anschluss) as a negative concept. Elena Nikiforova’s paper “Rebordering – and recycling? – borderlands’ memory: identity quest and tourism development in Narva on the Estonian-Russian border” was based on an extensive fieldwork in Narva, a town located on the Estonian side of the border and populated mostly by Russian speakers. She argued that Narva as a border town represents a locale where the boundaries between the memoryscapes and notions of “Estonia”, “Russia” and “Europe” are being constantly negotiated, reconfigured and reappropriated. The cultural politics of memory in this town have a pragmatic dimension -- the accentuation of landscape and historical landmarks in Narva is connected to economic “rebranding” of the town to tourism. In the following discussion the participants stated that the interplay of tourism and politics of memory in the borderlands raises up new important questions to the redefinition of meanings, materiality and visibility in border areas.
In the final discussion of the first day facilitated by Antke Engel the participants took up several central topics: the cultural politics of memory, definitions of citizenship, and how these relate to the processes of border-making. Concerning the first topic the discussion focused on differences in cultural politics of memory and asked how they relate to conditions of hegemony, marginalization, or disavowal, or the other way round: How such conditions shape cultural politics of memory. Since earlier during the day much attention had been paid to the constitutive role of historiography, the final discussion returned to the thematic framing of the workshop, and directly addressed the relationship between materiality and signification in creating and transforming borders.
In relation to the second topic (definitions of citizenship) a controversy came up concerning the question whether one can conceptualize citizenship without a notion of border. While some were arguing that neither legally nor conceptually it is possible to define an entity without drawing borders, others replied that it is no longer clear what “drawing a border” means when the border becomes an ambiguous, multiplied, non-coherent figure. Does this subvert the distinction between citizens and non-citizens? And if we characterize the status of non-citizens as precarious and name this “borderliness”, does this borderliness also infect those who formerly claimed the status of citizens? Agency and the distribution of agency came up as an alternative for defining citizenship other than an identity category or a mode of belonging. The term “denizen” may undermine clear-cut distinctions between citizens and non-citizens while still naming different degrees of agency and power, e.g. the “right” to pay taxes, but not to vote. Maybe, one can conceptualize the state without citizens (but rather denizens), even if there is no citizen without a state?
In the first session of the second day entitled “Ontologies of Immateriality and Invisibility,” Stef Jansen, Sanja Kajini? and Eleni Myrivili summarized their ideas on materiality and visibility of borders in Dobrinja (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Cyprus and the Prespa Lake region between Greece, Albania and Macedonia. Stef Jansen pushed forth the relevance of "social constructionism" and attempted to challenge the prevalent approaches to materiality in the UK anthropology (Ingoldians, Latourians, Deleuzians, ontologists) who ascribe agency or 'affordances' to things, objects or affects and thus dismiss (or neglect) the power of human agency. Illustrating his argument with ethnographic vignettes from Dobrinja, he described the (in)visible and (im)material modalities of the border: The once boundary line between the two entities of Bosnia-Herzegovina, this border is now 'unbuilt,' but nevertheless continues to exist as a material axis of practical geography and a struggle for sovereignty. Sanja Kajini? summarized the second photography project in Cyprus which main concern was the in/visibility of the green line, and the methodological and epistemological issues involved in a project of photographing in a "no-photography" borderland. Under Lena Malm's lens, this border emerged as a "photogenic border" manifesting its overwhelming materiality and presence in the daily life of people. Eleni Myrivili's presentation on Borders like Ghosts described the Prespa border region, where the borders of three nation-states -- Albania, Greece and Macedonia – “cut and partition the waters of a large mountain lake with their formless power.” Although invisible and ghostly, they can become tangible in violence that ensues their transgression. From the 80’s when the electrical barbed wires came all the way down to the lake, in the 90’s the national guards shot warning shots before aiming directly at the border violators. The most recent development in November 2009, gathered the Prime ministers of the three countries in the Prespa region who discussed about the transnational environmental park of Prespa, green local economy, and set the year 2014 (a hundred years after the beginning of WWI) as the target year for a new beginning, a new era that will see the Western Balkans part of the EU.
The last session, entitled “Between Borders, Minorities and ‘Frontier Citizens’ consisted of the two papers by Ljup?o Risteski and Luigi Ferraris. Ljup?o S. Risteski’s contribution concerned the monastery of St. Prohor Pcinjski, a highly contested site located in the Macedonian-Serbian border area, that is of great importance to Macedonian national identity, as it is the place where first AAPLM (Anti-Fascist Assembly for the People’s Liberation of Macedonia) was held. At this assembly, the contemporary Macedonian state was formed, as the Macedonian nation was officially declared and Macedonian was proclaimed the official language. However, formally located on the Serbian side of the border, the monastery could no longer feature as site for commemorating the AAPLM and before the upcoming 60th anniversary in 2004 a memorial centre was somewhat hastily constructed in nearby Pelince on the Macedonian side of the border. In his paper, Risteski described how the lack of transparency in the erection of this centre opened up new debates and interpretations of Macedonian national history and identity. The mosaic created by Macedonian artist Rubens Korubin entitled “Macedonian” seems to pose a mystery for Macedonian public and the iconography and symbolism do not correspond with collectively shared understandings of how to visually imagine and represent Macedonia as a nation. In his presentation Risteski used a number of visual materials on the centre and the mosaic in Pelince and gave a detailed reading of the iconography involved. Applying Anderson’s concept of “imagined communities” and Bhabha’s thoughts on “Nation and Narration”, Risteski reflected on the mechanisms of writing national narratives via monuments and spatial practices – both thoughts that were taken up in the ensuing discussion.
In the second paper of the panel and last of the conference, Luigi Ferraris provided a fathoming on the nature of borders referring to the particular case of Italy. Pursuing the question of how to build a state from a nation via the implication of various border schemes, he drew on the examples of Istria and South-Tyrol to scrutinise the status of ethnic and/or linguistic minorities, and analyzed the mechanisms by which the borders were drawn. Ferraris attempted to investigate the ambivalent set of meanings connected with the concept of the border – as both, connecting and dividing – while also taking the temporally shifting nature of borders into consideration. In conclusion he was rather sceptical of a multicultural notion of regions such as Istria and South-Tyrol and detected a more general trend in favour of ethnical homogenous states, however, not without pleading for a uniting European sentiment. His paper was mainly discussed in the light of the notion of a “Europe of regions” and regionalisation within nation states.
The final discussion reiterated the idea prevalent throughout the meeting that if we want to understand border-making processes it is important to conceptualize these as processes of signification. Going back to the relation between material and conceptual moments in processes of border-making, it is important to understand the material and the sensible as inherent to processes of signification so to avoid reproducing the binary of material/conceptual. The way they are intertwined is exactly enacted through signification. An important point is to highlight how signification itself is material and semiotic at the same time with imaginary aspects to it, and thus connects to visuality and fantasy. Regimes of visibility and technologies of visibility not only constitute, but are vital for upholding borders. The meeting ended with going around the room and soliciting possible WiKi entries.
Rozita Dimova
Berlin, August 2010
References:
Benjamin, W. (1999). The Arcades Project. Cambridge, Mass., Belknap Press.
Morss-Buck, S. (1986). Dialectics of Seeing. Princeton, Princeton University Press.
Rancière, J. (2004). The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible. London, MPG Books Ltd.