
Becoming-world means creating a cosmopolitan bond among humans. In order to reconstruct a cosmopolitan bond among ourselves, it is useful to start with a comprehensive analysis of our specific locations, our relationship to the social and ecological environments, our sense of genealogy, of intellectual and historical traditions. Locations are spatial-temporal coordinates that provide the framework to analyze our existence in terms of space, that is to say: class, ethnicity, geo-political relations, territorial and environmental belonging, nationality, and so on. But locations also define us in terms of time, that is to say by a sense of historical memory, family and personal genealogies, the attachment to religious and cultural practices, and trans-historical narratives. My model for this approach is the feminist method of the ‘politics of location’. This is an empirical, embodied philosophy first developed by Simone de Beauvoir ([1949] 1973), to study the different experiences of women—as compared to men—in a patriarchal system. Assuming that women occupy a different location, and that this difference is a mark of inequality, de Beauvoir focused on the specific aspects of the social, mental, and emotional existence of what she named ‘the second sex’. The second feminist wave of the 1960s and 1970s in the USA expanded this method and Adrienne Rich actually coined the term ‘politics of location’ (Rich, 1987), as a way of accounting for diversity among different kinds of women unified within the generic category of gender. Differences of class, race, sexuality, ethnicity, religion, age, and ability fragment the unified gender category of ‘woman’ and add both depth and complexity to a feminist understanding of what it means to be a woman.
This insight was further developed into the cornerstone of feminist-situated epistemologies, also known as situated knowledge (Harding, 1986; Haraway, 1988). Applied in a broader sense to the construction of all subjects of knowledge, as an analytical tool, the politics of location and a situated knowledge provides the means to explore our respective locations and thus confront our differences critically. As a creative tool, it helps us mediate the tensions and conflicts emerging from the different locations and supports the construction of shareable discourses and practices. The focus on collaboration and sharing sustains the project of experimenting with ways of transforming the patterns of our social interaction, so as to increase our capacity to relate productively to each other. Awareness of the relational ties that bind us can help us devise ways of honouring them. In this regard we are better off replacing universalism with the recognition of interdependence, which in turn entails the mutual acceptance of the fact that the politics of location offer a pluralistic array of partial and hence limited perspectives.
The politics of location and situated knowledge are a way to explore and analyze the kinds and the degrees of difference, in terms of access and entitlements to power, without dialectical opposition and violence. This method aims at achieving accountability by unveiling the power locations that one inevitably inhabits as the site of one’s social and subject-positions. I take power not as an exclusively negative term, but also as a productive one—it is both restrictive (potestas) and empowering or affirmative (potentia). The method of the politics of location and situated knowledge have enabled me to theorize the nomadic nature of subjectivity (Braidotti, 1994 and 2011). Subjectivity is nomadic, because of the multiple—and potentially contradictory—locations and power-relations that ‘we’ inhabit. The key idea is that each of us is not one closed and solid entity, but an open, relational, and multi-layered one. For example, ‘we’ can belong to multiple cultural communities that may not always be in harmonious terms or completely translatable into each other, and yet ‘we’ can find margins of encounter and negotiations between them. Similarly, ‘we’ are perfectly capable of speaking many languages, have family and friends in several countries, and yet be socialized adequately and function perfectly well. I have put ‘we’ deliberately in inverted commas to suspend any sense of self-evidence about this complex and internally fractured entity.
The point of complicating this subject position—‘we’—is to shift the question of citizenship to a matter of shared values and active participation, while diffusing any kind of essentialized identity. Citizens are as citizens do; ‘citizen acts’ are their defining feature (Isin and Nielsen, 2008). This perspective offers an alternative to a sacralized notion of nationalism. Whether ‘we’ hold one nationality, or more than one, or whether ‘we’ are seeking a new nationality through migration, asylum, and human rights laws, ‘we’ are capable of behaving like responsible citizens. ‘We’ are not one and the same, the differences between us are sharp and often painful, but ‘we’ can act as subjects-in-becoming. Being a nomadic subject means to understand that we belong, but that we also flow, because the boundaries between our different cultural locations are porous and not rigid.
The idea of nomadic subjectivity calls for an ethics of mutual respect. If we agree that locations are historicized and situated, but also dynamic foundations that structure one’s being-in-the-world and one’s social modes of belonging, it follows that they differ in quantitative and qualitative degrees. Whether we are diasporic, nomadic, hybrid, post-colonial, a migrant, a refugee, a post-communist, or an in-between subject, makes quite a difference. These positions are not the same, though they can be equivalent. The task of the critical thinker is to make relevant distinctions among these different locations and map their points of intersection, in order to create a politically invested account of our respective locations. I call this philosophical method of mapping the nomadic subject a ‘cartography’ (Braidotti, 2002). Such cartographies need to do justice to the power differentials involved in the different locations, while identifying a common project that can be shared by multiply-located subjects, committed to constructing new kinds of active citizenship.
The cartographic method of the politics of location can easily be applied to the analysis of other categories of nomadic subjectivity, for instance what it means to be human in the age of Artificial Intelligence and genomics; or what it means to speak of sustainability in the era known as the Anthropocene. When we start from the relational nature of the subject and emphasize the relation to others as constitutional of the self, the complications increase and multiply. The ‘others’ of the humans today are not only other human beings—anthropomorphic like ourselves, but differentiated—dialectically and hence negatively, by processes of sexualization, racialization, and ecologization (Braidotti, 2002). The non-human others include both organic non-humans such as animals, plants, bacteria, cells, et cetera, and technological non-human others, such as codes, networks, devices, and the like. This post-anthropocentric shift of today calls for a posthuman approach (Braidotti, 2013), to strike new modes of relation between human and non-human agents. In order to do justice to the complexity of our times, we need to think seriously about where ‘we’ all fit in between the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Schwab, 2015) and the Sixth Extinction (Kolbert, 2014). This challenge also complicates the task of thinking about the collective entity –‘we’ – that now must encompass not only anthropomorphic beings but also other species and the technological apparatus.
Over the last forty years, gender and post-colonial studies have taught us to analyze difference with higher degrees of subtlety. Thus, they argue that these ‘others’ are constitutive of the self, in that they are the specular opposite of the subject of modernity. Sexualized (women and LGBTQ+), racialized (the non-Europeans, blacks, indigenous, colonized others), and the ecologized others (the environment) are different-from, and hence worth-less-than ‘Man’—the white, heterosexual, middle-class, urbanized, male. They function consequently as the negative complement of the dominant vision of the subject, which defines other categories oppositionally and organizes them through a hierarchical system. In fact, the superiority of the dominant subject position is registered in its ability to position the others as inferior. Dominant positions assert their dominance by indexing and policing access to and participation in system of entitlements and power. Thus, it is not because he is more rational that ‘Man’ is dominant, but rather that, being dominant, male subjectivity has monopolized rationality as his distinctive prerogative (Lloyd, 1985). The dominant subject defines himself as much by what he excludes—the ‘others’—as by what he includes in his self-understanding. Moreover, the dominant subject is always presented as a natural necessity, or as the outcome of an unavoidable evolutionary effort, which allows it to function as the standard-bearer of successful normality. The naturalization of power is one of the assets of dominant categories.
Because of the systemic way in which power works, as both entrapment and empowerment, we need critical and creative accounts of our multiple and potentially contradictory locations. Accepting that ‘we’ are in this predicament together, but ‘we’ are not one and the same is the first move towards a new vision of becoming-world, by which I mean a planetary citizenship that might be attuned to the complexity of our era.
Accepting that ‘we’ is not a universalist entity blurring all differences, but rather a relational threshold that acknowledges and honours those differences, is at the core of relational ethics. It combines the recognition that ‘we’ are fractured by multiple and multi-layered differences of locations, and hence of power and entitlements, with the rejection of a dialectical and negative view of these differences. Instead, differences become the building blocks of a shared sense of identity, while maintaining the diversity of situated locations and power relations that have structured the different kinds of subjects ‘we’ have become. To achieve this balancing act, ‘we’ have to produce a courageous act of collective creation of citizens that are rooted, yet flow, and that have left behind some of the more selfish aspects of liberal individualism, to recognize the active intervention of others in every aspect of our existence.
If we now transpose my cartographic and nomadic approach to a changing European landscape, a number of interesting ideas emerge on how to go beyond methodological nationalism (Beck, 2007) and develop a transformative European citizenship for the third millennium. A new agenda needs to be set, which is no longer that of a Eurocentric identity, but rather a serious transformation of it, towards an open and relational ‘we’ as situated yet different citizens in a fast-changing world. Eurocentrism is an old-fashioned but powerful habit of thought that supports a flattering rendition of ‘Europeanness’ as a civilizational marker. This attitude transforms Europe from a concrete geo-political location with a specific history, into an abstract and value-laden ideal. Europe as the symbol of rational self-consciousness posits itself as a special site of scientific reason and cultural genius and as the motor of world-historical progress towards modernity. We need to replace this imperial vision with something more grounded, less pretentious and better attuned to a shared planetary condition that ‘we’ all share in—although we are not one and the same.
The fundamental question today is not just who we are, but rather what we are capable of becoming. In an age that is marked by many forms of social and political regression, notably the rise of new forms of nationalism, populism and neo-fascist and undemocratic movements, we need to develop forms of shared responsibility for the specific location that is Europe. These regressive attitudes must be transformed collectively and give way to the affirmative transformations I outlined before: a becoming-world in a relational and productive manner. Symbolic of the regressive tendencies in Europe at present is the deterioration of our collective relationship to migrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers, who bear the brunt of racism in contemporary Europe, as the project of multiculturalism seems to have lost momentum.
Applying the method of the feminist politics of location to this conjuncture, we need to start the process by producing adequate understanding of our current situation. A useful first step is to remember our complex history, which is not only full of glorious achievement, but also of objectionable events and shameful moments. Europe’s history includes colonialism, fascism, several world wars, and a tendency to xenophobic rejection of others. As Balibar (2001) and Bauman (2004) have argued, contemporary European subjects and citizens must meet the ethical obligation to be accountable for their past history and the long shadow it casts on present-day social and political life. This is the only way to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. The new mission that Europe has to embrace is indeed courageous as well as creative. It entails the criticism of narrow-minded self-interests, intolerance, and racist rejection of otherness. We need to infuse new collective meaning and credible energy into the statement that ‘we’ are in this together. The sense of connection and cohesion needs to be qualified by the recognition of the structural differences of location that compose each of us. Only a grounded and accountable analysis of these differences in a non-oppositional manner can result in a renewed claim to community and belonging by singular subjects. This results in a proliferation of locally situated claims, or ‘a collaborative morality’ (Lloyd, 1996, p. 74).
This kind of situated ‘becoming-world’ has emerged as a powerful ethical claim in the work of postcolonial and race theorists, for instance in Edouard Glissant’s idea of the poetics—as well as the politics—of relations (1990). Building on Stuart Hall’s work, the notion of a ‘planetary’ connection that transcends the limitations of mere economic globalization is also gathering force. This can be seen in, for example, Paul Gilroy’s concept of planetary cosmopolitanism (2000), Avtar Brah’s diasporic ethics (1996), and Vandana Shiva’s critique of ‘bio-piracy’ and capitalist de-humanization (1997). These positions, all other differences notwithstanding, produce alternative locations and figurations of what it means to be citizen today, enlarging narrow individualism and defying xenophobic reflexes. They not only emphasize hybridity, nomadism, multiculturalism, diasporas, and creolization processes, but also work on building relational ties across these different locations. They transpose them into means of re-grounding connections and alliances among subjects marked by the diversity and the specificity of their respective ecologies of belonging. Nationalism and Eurocentrism are of hindrance, rather than assistance, in trying to redefine the planetary and interconnected nature of contemporary subjects. Together, ‘we’ need to raise the courage needed to move beyond these obstacles and adopt a more constructive approach.
No notion is more contested in European politics and social theory, especially in these days of Brexit and populist referenda, than the social-political project of the European Union (EU). As a mainstream project, the EU is a massive global economic and political player, but there is more to it than an aggressive concept of ‘civilization’. As a transformative project, the EU constitutes the possibility of an alternative to the polarized social-economic realities of the global market and also as a progressive advocate of human rights and world peace. The EU is a multi-faceted political project, where reactionary and progressive elements of the European projects stand alongside one another. On the one hand, Europe celebrates its cultural diversity and the importance of transnational exchanges, but on the other hand it witnesses the resurgence of hyper-nationalisms occurring at the micro-level of regions, provinces, and even towns. The cosmopolitan global city and the paranoid Fortress Europe stand back-to-back as opposite but interconnected sides of the same coin.
In an attempt to bypass these binary oppositions, I emphasize an alternative vision of Europe as becoming-post-Eurocentric, or ‘becoming-world’. The demise of Eurocentrism is taken as a generative premise that points to the possibility of a qualitative shift in our collective sense of identity and our collective imagining (Gatens and Lloyd, 1999). Contained within the progressive project of the EU are the seeds for a post-nationalist social-political space (Habermas, 2001). But this potential flies in the face of the insurgent neo-nationalism of European nation states, especially in the former East, which creates deep fissions within the EU. We then see how the sense of shared locations, of a common European citizenship and a shared history, culture, and currency, coexists with increasing internal fragmentation, regionalism, and xenophobia. The ‘new’ Europe is trying to steer its course in the midst of these complex and contradictory coordinates.
Again, let us take our history seriously. Since the end of European hegemony and especially after World War II, the decline of Europe as an imperial world power has been at the centre of the project of European unification. This means Europe has to find another way of being in the world. A post-war consensus has arisen, which stresses the advantages of transforming Europe into a social-political laboratory so as to develop a post-nationalist sense of citizenship. Europe needs to become the place that is capable of elaborating a critical reflection on its own history, so as not to repeat its mistakes, notably the reduction of the different lives of sexualized, racialized, ecologized ‘others’ to a pejorative, devalorized status.
In my transformative perspective, the political project of European unification involves a qualitative shift in consciousness, which is the result of the process of analyzing and accounting for the politics of location. A courageous and creative post-nationalist vision of Europe entails the critique of ethnocentrism and of the self-appointed role of Europe as the alleged centre of the world—this false universalism underpinning the old Eurocentric identity.
As an alternative, I propose a nomadic, that is to say multi-lingual, multi-faceted and hybrid vision of Europe as a place where we are historically pushed to think about our history in a critical but also creative manner. As a post-nationalist project, the EU will, ideally, undergo a change in consciousness away from nationalism, moving towards a flexible mode of citizenship that allows for multiple belongings.
This image of Europe is the opposite of the grandiose and aggressive universalism of the past. In contrast, this new image of Europe is both a situated and accountable perspective, that becomes-world in a non-conquering manner, turns our collective social imaginary away from the mental habit of cultural homogeneity towards a relational sense of diversity. Such a qualitative shift will allow us to look to the future confidently and to the past without nostalgia. As such it is a creative gesture, producing horizons of hope and, simultaneously, constructing the possibility of a future that is alive to the positivity of difference, the wealth of diversity, and the need for qualitative transformations.
For people who inhabit the European region, the present is marked to an unprecedented degree by trans-culturality, migration, and flows of migrants, itinerant workers, war refugees, and asylum seekers. The endless talk of yet another ‘refugee crisis’ is the symptom of the seabed change that is taking place in the very structure of European self-perception, as well as Europeans’ anxiety about how to cope with this change. These new social-political realities raise fundamental questions concerning entitlement and agency. Thus the EU is faced with the following issue: can one be European, Black, Jewish, and Muslim? How can ‘we’, in all fairness, expect some of our fellow citizens to put up with being a Europe-born non-European, confined to the status of a second-class citizen within the dominant polity, while being an official citizen, as is often the case with generations of migrants and post-colonial citizens? Can the European project enable a new practice of flexible and multi-layered post-nationalist European subjectivity? Being a nomadic European subject means to be in transit within different identity-formations, but also to be sufficiently anchored to a historical position so as to accept responsibility for the location one occupies. By assuming full responsibility for the partial perspective of its own location, the European space can open up to a world no longer dominated by European power alone, while remaining loyal to the wealth and diversity of its roots.
The process of multiple belongings and a becoming-world of European citizens is transformative and affirmative, but not without its challenges. It requires some degree of dis-identification from established, nation-bound parameters of identity-formation. Such an enterprise inevitably entails a sense of loss as cherished habits of thought and representation will be left behind. This mature and sobering experience offers unquestionable benefits, because it produces a more adequate cartography of our real-life conditions, free from delusions of grandeur. It is therefore more lucid epistemologically and ethically fairer.
There is a lot to be learned from migrants, exiles, and refugees, who have first-hand experience of the pain and loss felt as a result of being uprooted and of forced dis-identification with familiar identities. Multi-locality is the affirmative translation of this negative sense of loss, allowing for the active production of multiple forms of belonging and complex allegiances (Glissant, 1997). What is lost with the sense of fixed origins is gained in an increased desire for multiple belonging.
The qualitative leap through the sense of loss of familiar values can turn into a gesture of active creation, one that affirms new ways of belonging. It is a fundamental reconfiguration of our way of being in the world that acknowledges the pain of loss whilst moving beyond it. Given that identifications constitute an inner scaffolding that supports one’s sense of identity, we cannot shift the social imaginary lightly, like casting away a used garment. This process is difficult and more akin to shedding an old skin. Moreover, it is a collective activity; a group project that connects active, conscious, and willing citizens. It points towards a virtual, but no less real, destination – a post-nationalist Europe that becomes world. It is historically grounded, socially embedded, and already partly actualized in the joint endeavours of those who are currently working towards it. Affirming new ways of belonging mobilizes positive affects, such as creativity, the imagination, the power of vision and bonding.
Collectively, we can enlist the transformative power of these affective forces to create alternatives and move towards becoming-world. European post-nationalist or nomadic identity is such a project: political at heart, it has a strong ethical pull made up of conviction, vision, and desire. As a project it requires active participation and a striving towards what we are capable of becoming and different ways of inhabiting the European social space.
Far from being the prelude to a neo-universal stance, or its dialectical pluralist counterpart, or even the relativistic acceptance of all and any locations, the project of the becoming-world of Europe is an ethical transformation by a former centre that chooses the path of immanent change and multi-layered transformation. ‘We’ need to collectively produce enough self-respect and visionary energy to shed nationalism and become the subjects of multiple ecologies of belonging. The key here is an ethics of respect for diversity that produces mutually interdependent nomadic subjects and thus constitutes communities across multiple locations and generations. This humble project of being worthy of the present world while also resisting it, aims at constructing together social horizons of hope and sustainability. It expresses a transformative talent, that is to say a commonly shared commitment to social infrastructures of generosity, which might enable ‘us’ to be affirmative in this becoming-world together.