ΑΛΛΗΛΕΓΓΥΗ ΣΤΗΝ ΕΕ: ΕΞΕΛΙΞΕΙΣ ΣΤΟ ΠΕΔΙΟ ΤΗΣ ΠΡΟΣΦΥΓΙΚΗΣ ΠΡΟΣΤΑΣΙΑΣ ΚΑΙ ΠΡΟΚΛΗΣΕΙΣ ΣΤΗΝ ΕΕ ΚΑΙ ΣΤΗΝ ΕΛΛΑΔΑ

Dimitrios Akrivoulis 35 The tragedy and the farce in the conceptual development of solidarity do not merely concern the inability to substantiate its claim to universality beyond the strict confines of the nation state. They primarily relate to a paradoxical political process and a respective political aporia: every time a universal claim is articulat- ed, it always already entails a series of misreprentations, silences and exclusions. Realizing the unavoidability of this paradox and of this aporia could hardly serve as a source of political pessimism or discouragement from agonistic politics. To the contrary, this realization is the sine qua non condition that may allow politics to remain always open and constantly contested. The conceptual detour of solidarity discussed here suggests that solidarity does not only define the how but also the where of politics. To whom am I solidary? Which are the limits of the political context, within which we are called to provide for the fragile balance between equality and freedom, defining eventually the very content of justice? Could we meaningfully talk of the content (the how ) of solidarity and of the rights we are called to balance within the locus of solidarity, yet outside the political context of a community that defines ethically and legally their content and practically substantiates their exercise? Most crucially, is that possible free from the danger of imposing a Western-like reading of these rights, repeating an age-old (neo-)imperialistic tradition, which continues to formulate both the content of Culture and that of Man? Even if we accept the difficulty and the dangers implicit in the above questions, are we ready to theoretically accept the consequences of equating the concept of the Citizen with that of Man? If the Rights of Man (and of the Woman) could be substantiated only as civil rights, are we ready to accept a smaller or lesser ‘human’ content to all those subjects devoid or deprived of citizenship (i.e. sans- papiers , illegal immigrants)? To what extent could we meaningfully expect the demonstration of a spirit of solidarity in Europe toward both asylum seekers and those economically week countries that are first called to deal with those flows, when we have already related solidarity with consumer protection; or when we have already limited its scope, its dimensions and its locus within the confines of the nation state or those of the ‘European way of life’? I do not pose those ques- tions as moral dilemmas. I propose them as starting points for further thought and action. The true impasse is not the one that (we think) we have inherited from the Ancients, but the one delimited by our political imagination. Those limits were not deterministically set by an Aristotelian view of political life ( βίος πολιτικός ), as we normally think, but through a series of axiomatic, ontological assumptions that prevent us not only from recognizing the human beyond the precincts of citi- zenship, but from accepting that the political (and Europe) should be found some- where else from where we have traced it so far.