Re: <nettime> Bifo: Democracy is not possible in Europe & Reply by Varou

On Tue, Jul 11, 2017 at 5:49 AM, Frederic Neyrat <fneyrat@gmail.com> wrote:

the question is: how to refuse simultaneously the authoritarian Euroland and any sort of nationalism? The only answer is: with a new form of internationalism. On which basis? The fact that a human (I continue here another nettime conversation) is always more than a mere human, that a local place is fortunately more than itself, that a political fight contains an "ideological" surplus that connects it to other places, etc. We need a narrative able to give a face to this surplus, this "more than", and we also - more than anything else - need a people of tellers able to produce this Great Narrative.

This is true common sense, the great missing rallying cry from which everything else can spring.

I see it exactly as you do, Frederic. Everything that inspires me to go on working and loving and striving in the national context comes from outside it, whether that "outside" is an inner core of resistant otherness or a distant solidarity borne on language's wings. The nation is an irrevocable problem, which I accept as such, because the others exist and call me beyond it.

What does the tale tell? That someone came from a far-distant place, maybe just down the road, maybe here in our midst, and said "Your land is a trash heap and a sorrow and a blight on the face of humanity, like mine. But we could do better, if we ourselves were otherwise."

I've been hearing that tale, always different and new, for decades. It continues to make me into whom I was not the day before.

Thanks for that, Brian

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