A Strategy for the Deconstruction of the Dichotomic Structure of the European Discourse on Migration since 2015

Preface

This book was written along the road, and concerns people’s reality, in its most immediate concrete sense. And so, without these people, this book could not have been written. Therefore, my thankfulness goes out to every single person I met in café’s, libraries, on buses and ferries, and who was willing to share his or her story with me. In particular, I would like to thank the employees of NGOs and International Organizations I interviewed, in Istanbul (Turkey), Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary and Austria, for their time, and for sharing their experiences and insights. For the time I spent in New York in 2015, where I drafted the very first sketches for this text, I would like to thank my Jewish-Armenian family. For their great hospitality and warmest friendship in Istanbul and beyond, I would like to express heartfelt gratitude to Eyuphan and Songül Özdemir, Patrick Roney, Paul and Yvonne Godfrey, and Serdar Erdem. For their patience, support and loyalty, I am thankful to my friends from Amsterdam, especially to: Andrea van der Grinten, Damiaan Meuwissen, Kees Jan Brons and Marijke Beekman, Koeno Sluyterman van Loo, Paula Roovers, Serge Manusov, and Willem Bruls. During the ‘Covid-19 lockdowns’, I had the privilege to stay with friends in France. For this time, I would like to thank, Albert and Chantal Andreis, for their help, and for all that we shared around the kitchen table. Meanwhile, I was able to continue my research thanks to the inspiration and engagement of Ferdinand Schmatz, for which I am very grateful. And, last but not least, I would like to thank Jesse Mulder for his excellent criticism of the text, Martijn Pluim (International Center for Migration Policy Development), and the Foundations that have given me the opportunity to pursue this research in this first place: the Iona Stichting, Ludovica Stichting, Stichting De Zaaier, and the RD Foundation Vienna. Thank you all for joining me on this journey.

It has been a journey indeed. Actually, in some respects, this journey continues, since there will always be migrants, and there will always be all kinds of discourses on migration, that is, as long there is human life. In order to come as close as possible to this continuous migration-movement, to the immediate experience of crisis, in a crisis, and to a movement of thinking (from a phenomenological perspective), my style, in this text, differs from what one might call a more traditional academic style. By way of introduction, I will give a few examples: Whenever this is appropriate, I tend not to make use of objectifying language. Objectifying language states things, whereas I will try, stylistically, to ←9 | 10→emphasize the continuous movement of things and experiences. For this reason, among others, I often make use of so-called incomplete sentences. These are often sentences starting off with the word ‘which’. Which, I believe, shows the openness of any movement, because the sentence in question is not completed. Further, I often make use of the word ‘of’, and the verb ‘to refer to’ in order to emphasize a relation from a phenomenological point of view. And so, not surprisingly, the words openness and relation will turn out to be among the five so-called notions that constitute the deconstruction strategy, i.e., the movement of thinking, that I will develop in this inquiry.

Chapter 1 Introduction

In this book, I develop a movement of thinking that I will call a deconstruction strategy. The term ‘movement of thinking’ refers to the dynamic structure of thinking and to our being-in-the-world, from which all kinds of subjectivistic/psychological aspects should be excluded. The term ‘deconstruction strategy’ I have borrowed from Derrida. In line with Derrida, I state that the deconstruction strategy is about doing justice. However, the way in which the deconstruction strategy will be developed and will manifest itself differs from Derrida’s approach, and also differs from linguistic (re-)interpretations of the term. Nonetheless, like Derrida critically does, I will draw on Heidegger, although I will do this differently. The deconstruction strategy will be developed from Heidegger’s engagement with being-there (Dasein) in-the-world, Husserl’s concept of intentionality, and from what I will call given or givenness.

In this chapter, I introduce the deconstruction strategy and sketch its context: the so-called European migration crisis 2015, and I introduce the discourse that is said to stem from the political climate of this crisis, along with its dichotomic structure. However, as the deconstruction strategy in the course of its development in this book will show, the dichotomy structure of the European discourse on migration, which is thus known as a highly polarized discourse, does not merely stem from the European migration crisis in 2015. As the deconstruction strategy will reveal, this structure is related to the experience of the 9/11 crisis, and Europe’s contribution to the War on Terror after 9/11/2001. Not because there would be a direct causality, but because 9/11 opened up a fertile ground, i.e., space for a manifestation of a polarized public European discourse on migration.¹ Moreover, the deconstruction ←11 | 12→strategy will show how (social) sciences can contribute to dichotomic structures in discourses with an ideal-typical use of concepts.

To be frank, my choice for Heidegger has not been an absolutely free one in the sense that I was able to make this choice independently from the tradition in which I was educated, independently from the era and social-political space in which I was born and raised. Sure, it has been my own choice to do research on issues regarding migration. But since I had become a migrant myself, since my family members from both my Jewish side and the industrial-colonial side are living across the globe, migration had become my subject, and so I looked for a philosopher who most insightfully, most originally and most fruitfully showed the way we are in the world. And according to my view, this philosopher is: Heidegger. I prefer to refer to Heidegger instead of Martin Heidegger, since, to paraphrase Derrida: “It would be frivolous to think that “Descartes,” “Leibniz,” “Hegel,” etc. are names of authors […],” they are, rather, names of problems.2

Of course, I am well aware of the fact that Heidegger never apologized during his life for his Nazi Party (NSDAP) membership until 1945. In the well-known Der Spiegel interview of 1966, that was published posthumously in 1976, about Heidegger’s political past, this membership was not even mentioned.³ Instead, Heidegger justified his role as a rector and professor during the Nazi-regime. An attitude that apparently remained unchanged, even after Heidegger’s personal conversations with the Jewish Holocaust survivor and poet Paul Celan who visited him two months before the Spiegel-interview at Heidegger’s cabin on Todtnauberg, and spoke with him after, before Celan’s death in 1970.⁴ It was, therefore, as Gessmann states: “the commonly accepted position across the philosophical spectrum from Jürgen Habermas to Peter Sloterdijk”, that “Heidegger as a person has been seen as a failure, his philosophy not so.”⁵

After the publication of the first volumes of Heidegger’s personal notebooks (1931–1976) in 2014, known as Black Notebooks (Schwarze Hefte) because of their color,6 in which Heidegger’s unambiguously antisemitic views were revealed for the first time, the philosophy and the philosophical works of Heidegger have entered a phase of critical reappraisal. For example, after the publication of the Black Notebooks, Günter Figal resigned as president of the Heidegger Society: “I was no longer able to represent Heidegger as a person, and I had also realized that an uncompromisingly critical discussion of Heidegger’s ideological position inside the Heidegger Society was not possible.” However, Figal continues: “I refuse […] to characterize Heidegger as a ‘fascist thinker’. Otherwise I would have to agree with the idea that Gadamer, Arendt, Löwith as well as Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, Foucault and many others were influenced by fascist philosophy, and this appears simply absurd to me.”⁷

With the greatest respect for a scholar from whom I still can learn a lot, I would like to question this pronouncement: would it really be absurd that these distinguished and important 20th-century philosophers were influenced by fascist philosophy? Isn’t fascism and antisemitism so deeply rooted in European society that we often, despite the best intentions, still do not take notice of it?⁸ These are not the questions of this inquiry. But they are questions that arise from the deconstruction strategy to be developed in this book, which is oriented at revealing what is being concealed, at doing justice to what is being concealed. Moreover, it was Heidegger who introduced, albeit in a different context, a term for this movement: to unconceal, from the Greek “a-letheia”. “[…] The entities of ←13 | 14→which one is talking must be taken out of their hiddenness; one must let them be seen as something unhidden […].”9

Therefore, I believe, it is important to continue to study Heidegger, even after the publication of the Black Notebooks. As Figal points out, Heidegger has influenced many European continental thinkers of the 20th century, who have influenced many others. Thus, if we wish to understand our recent European heritage, i.e., modern European culture, studying Heidegger might even be a prerequisite.¹⁰ Secondly, it is in line with Heidegger’s notion of being-in-the-world that Heidegger himself was part of a tradition. And however original and profound his reflections in his magnum opus Being and Time (1927) might have been, Heidegger was (therefore?) unable to distance himself (philosophically) from this vicious European tradition, which makes me wary that I myself cannot be ethically sensitive enough, and even that will not be enough, since this tradition is so deeply rooted within all of us.

To conclude my brief remarks on my position regarding Heidegger: I agree with Figal and many others that Heidegger’s magnum opus Being and Time is and will remain most likely one of the most important books in modern philosophy.¹¹ Nonetheless, there are some passages I am not fond of. These are the ←14 | 15→passages in which Heidegger becomes a little too moralistic, I feel, even though they are still strictly philosophical. Unfortunately, it falls outside of the scope of this inquiry to discuss these passages in detail – though my modest criticism will become clear over the course of this book. Furthermore, I have put aside all possible theological readings of Being and Time. This seems obvious, since “Heidegger, for his part, made no mystery of the methodologically atheist character of his philosophy.”12 But maybe the latter position might be untenable after all, if we wish to understand Heidegger’s antisemitic statements.

Again, this last question lies beyond the scope of this inquiry. But since it starts off with the so-called European migration crisis in 2015, and given that this inquiry concerns the way in which we talk, and thus also think, feel about, and live with migrants, I should be as explicit as possible about how the deconstruction strategy is going to be developed, from, among others, Heidegger’s notion ‘being in the world’. This notion, or rather, these notions: being-there (Dasein) in-the-world, are philosophical notions that I will explain in Chapter 3. For now, it will be sufficient to mention that being-there (Dasein) in-the-world will lay the ground for the constitution of a movement of thinking which includes everyone in the world. Secondly, with Heidegger I will show that being in the world necessarily implies: having an orientation. This holds for anyone, thus for any migrant, and thus also for, for example, Heidegger.

The statement “everyone is included” is not a principle or claim. According to my reading, the statement follows from Heidegger’s existentiale analyzes (Existenzialanalytik).¹³ “Existentiale” (Existenzial) (singular) or “existentiales” (Existenzialien) (plural) are neologisms of Heidegger. By analogy to the categories of Kant, they show the necessary characteristics (of being) of being-there (Dasein). However, in contrast to Kant, the existentiale analysis is not an epistemology of any sort. In phenomenological terminology, the existentiale analysis shows what is necessarily given with how we all are in the world. One example of our being in the world is, as mentioned above, that we all are always oriented at things and/or people in one way or another. How the existentiale analysis exactly works I will explain in Chapter 3 as well, after I have explained, in Chapter 2, the continental-philosophical and phenomenological tradition that constitutes its background.

From Chapter 5 onwards, I will show how the deconstruction strategy actually works, i.e., moves with regard to the deconstruction of dichotomic structures in particular. The notions of the deconstruction strategy will hereby help to reveal what is being concealed, in particular by ideal-typical concepts. The latter are often supposed to depict reality, but in fact they appear to be too abstract and/or too general to show the particular concrete reality.14 Thinking in terms of ideal-types and binary concepts is, however, very common. We do it all the time. But in a polarized political climate, thinking in terms of binary concepts, which I have called a thinking in terms of ‘either–or’, fuels this climate. This statement, i.e., claim, is based on my interviews with employees of NGOs and International Organizations on the Eastern Balkan Route in 2018–2019, who stressed that this either–or structure of speech and reasoning is (still) the most persistent problem to deal with since the so-called European migration crisis in 2015.

The so-called European migration crisis is said to have begun in the spring of 2015. Images and reports of capsized boats in the Mediterranean waters were increasingly disseminated through television, papers, radio reports, and social media. And although the infamous Dublin Regulation had been on the European agenda for a long time,15 it was only after a week in April in which the number of drowned migrants in the Mediterranean Sea had risen to around 1000, that an emergency meeting of Foreign and Interior Ministers was held in Luxembourg, on Monday 20th of April 2015, followed by an extraordinary meeting of the European Council three days later.¹⁶ Whereas on the European Union Summit in February 2015 the topic of migration wasn’t mentioned, suddenly migration had become one of the top priorities of the European Union.