PANEL 24 / BORDER CROSSING AND STRUGGLES INTERSECTIONS BEFORE UNIVERSALISM: MIGRATION, OTHERISATION AND MARGINALITY
CONVENORS: LETIZIA KONDERAK (University San Raffaele Milano) and ANNA MIGLIORINI (University of Firenze)
All enquiries about the panel should be sent to [email protected] and [email protected].
One of the most precious pearls that the Enlightenment offered to Western tradition is universalism, the double movement of intensive and extensive universalization claiming political and legal equality and rejecting that anybody could be legitimately excluded (Balibar, 2010). Universalism overlaps with the faith in constant economic growth, Western institutions, and a philosophy of history headed to a blooming future. Nonetheless, its approach is all but universalist or objective in the sense of plural, inclusive, and exhaustive (Haraway, 1989), and neglects standpoints in general, and non-Eurocentric and de-colonialising standpoints in particular – starting from the fact that western wealth relies on internal and external exploitation. Still, that economic and class criteria are also hidden in political, legal, and theoretical universalism was already clear to Karl Marx (Marx, 1848).
Furthermore, since the universal human being does not exist, universalism already conceals a partial definition of what human beings are (Arendt, 1951), as well as a threshold under which one would not be human anymore – thereby becoming bashable (Agamben, 1995; Cavarero, 2009). Hence universalism conceals a double operation: the fixation of a standard/normal humanity – historically Western, male, bourgeois – and the removal of a diminished humanity – including non-Western, queer, differently abled, and female subjects. Such a universalism shows its ambivalence: measures for political inclusion but also injunctions to assimilation (Benhabib, 1998; Lindahl, 2008).
Based on the assumption that knowledge is always situated and embedded (Haraway, 1989 & 1991), this panel asks whether the “uncounted” (Rancière, 2004), all those who migrate in a wide sense, and still live at the intersections, are in a privileged position to objectify and assess the dominating theoretical-political-economic exclusionary apparatus. In an intersectional perspective, migrants, stateless, women, queer people, and the exploited workers unsettlingly dwell at the margins of western states, set of values, or wellbeing. Rights’ violation, economic exploitation, social ostracization: the only choice left is between assimilation or marginalization. This applies to geographical migration (Salgado, 2005), class non-reproduction (Jaquet, 2023), gender migration (Zurn, Pitts, Bettcher, Di Pietro, 2024), and feminist epistemological migration, as state boundaries are not the only border to cross. As many of these transiting subjects become often the internal “others”, their situated knowledges could offer precious vantage points to grasp the limits of the hegemonic cultural and power framework.
Against this background, this panel assesses manifold implications. Proposals could include patters such as:
- Critique and/or optimistic views on universalism from theoretical, political, and legal perspectives.
- Do margins provide a privileged viewpoint on the Western economic, political, and societal organizations?
- Critiques and analysis of concepts such as moralization and politicization of the “other” (Lévinas, 1984; Rancière, 1997).
- Internal, external, gender migrations, including intersectional views: examples of feminist, class, and queer perspectives confronting universalism.
- Positionality and situatedness: does situation necessarily define positioning (Bedorf, 2024)? If not does the original position leave a trace as a conscious, unthought, or removed past?
All enquiries about the panel should be sent to [email protected] and [email protected].
One of the most precious pearls that the Enlightenment offered to Western tradition is universalism, the double movement of intensive and extensive universalization claiming political and legal equality and rejecting that anybody could be legitimately excluded (Balibar, 2010). Universalism overlaps with the faith in constant economic growth, Western institutions, and a philosophy of history headed to a blooming future. Nonetheless, its approach is all but universalist or objective in the sense of plural, inclusive, and exhaustive (Haraway, 1989), and neglects standpoints in general, and non-Eurocentric and de-colonialising standpoints in particular – starting from the fact that western wealth relies on internal and external exploitation. Still, that economic and class criteria are also hidden in political, legal, and theoretical universalism was already clear to Karl Marx (Marx, 1848).
Furthermore, since the universal human being does not exist, universalism already conceals a partial definition of what human beings are (Arendt, 1951), as well as a threshold under which one would not be human anymore – thereby becoming bashable (Agamben, 1995; Cavarero, 2009). Hence universalism conceals a double operation: the fixation of a standard/normal humanity – historically Western, male, bourgeois – and the removal of a diminished humanity – including non-Western, queer, differently abled, and female subjects. Such a universalism shows its ambivalence: measures for political inclusion but also injunctions to assimilation (Benhabib, 1998; Lindahl, 2008).
Based on the assumption that knowledge is always situated and embedded (Haraway, 1989 & 1991), this panel asks whether the “uncounted” (Rancière, 2004), all those who migrate in a wide sense, and still live at the intersections, are in a privileged position to objectify and assess the dominating theoretical-political-economic exclusionary apparatus. In an intersectional perspective, migrants, stateless, women, queer people, and the exploited workers unsettlingly dwell at the margins of western states, set of values, or wellbeing. Rights’ violation, economic exploitation, social ostracization: the only choice left is between assimilation or marginalization. This applies to geographical migration (Salgado, 2005), class non-reproduction (Jaquet, 2023), gender migration (Zurn, Pitts, Bettcher, Di Pietro, 2024), and feminist epistemological migration, as state boundaries are not the only border to cross. As many of these transiting subjects become often the internal “others”, their situated knowledges could offer precious vantage points to grasp the limits of the hegemonic cultural and power framework.
Against this background, this panel assesses manifold implications. Proposals could include patters such as:
- Critique and/or optimistic views on universalism from theoretical, political, and legal perspectives.
- Do margins provide a privileged viewpoint on the Western economic, political, and societal organizations?
- Critiques and analysis of concepts such as moralization and politicization of the “other” (Lévinas, 1984; Rancière, 1997).
- Internal, external, gender migrations, including intersectional views: examples of feminist, class, and queer perspectives confronting universalism.
- Positionality and situatedness: does situation necessarily define positioning (Bedorf, 2024)? If not does the original position leave a trace as a conscious, unthought, or removed past?
