This article was downloaded by: [Universite Laval] On: 12 May 2013, At: 14:42 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cang20 What Is Eastern Europe? Julia Sushytska a a Philosophy Department, University of Redlands, 1200 E Colton Ave, Redlands, CA 92373, USA Published online: 14 Dec 2010. To cite this article: Julia Sushytska (2010): What Is Eastern Europe?, Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 15:3, 53-65 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2010.536010 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and- conditions This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.
Transcript
This article was downloaded by: [Universite Laval]On: 12 May 2013, At: 14:42Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Angelaki: Journal of the TheoreticalHumanitiesPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cang20
What Is Eastern Europe?Julia Sushytska aa Philosophy Department, University of Redlands, 1200 E ColtonAve, Redlands, CA 92373, USAPublished online: 14 Dec 2010.
To cite this article: Julia Sushytska (2010): What Is Eastern Europe?, Angelaki: Journal of theTheoretical Humanities, 15:3, 53-65
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2010.536010
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.
The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representationthat the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of anyinstructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primarysources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings,demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly orindirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.
ANGELAKIjournal of the theoretical humanitiesvolume 15 number 3 december 2010
Addressing an international symposium on
European identity, Merab Mamardashvili –
one of the foremost philosophers of the twentieth
century still relatively unknown to the English-
speaking world – asserted that outside of Europe
it is possible to acquire a vantage point that
would actually yield a more profound under-
standing of the West itself. From it one can
discern the truths that are no longer visible from
the ‘‘inside,’’ because too self-evident.1
Building upon this claim, I would argue that
not just any place outside of the West can become
such a vantage point, but only those that are
borderlands, to use a notion elaborated by
Gloria Anzaldua. Moreover, certain of these
lands around borders – and Eastern Europe is
one of them – defy the inside/outside dichotomy
altogether by being not strictly other to the West,
although not identical with it either.
In this essay I would like to begin thinking
through an instance of borderlands by elaborating
the notion of Eastern Europe. What is Eastern
Europe insofar as it provides a kind of under-
standing and experience no longer accessible to
the West? The answer to this question is not an
evident one precisely because if considered in this
way Eastern Europe is not a politico-geographical
entity – it cannot be, if it is to constitute such a
vantage point. But if it is not a territory that,
however imprecise, can be pointed out on a map,
what is it?
My hope is that by the end of this essay we
would have made a step forward in understanding
this question. Especially because today, at the
beginning of the twenty-first century, such a
project seems to be particularly urgent, as the
position of Eastern Europe can provide new
insights into the many economic and political
issues that are threatening to overwhelm both the
West and its Others.2 To mention only one of
them, the grave and complex problem of
immigration can be approached and understood
in an entirely new light from a vantage point that
I am calling Eastern Europe. However, it will not
fall within the scope of the present work to
provide or even sketch out an answer to this or
many related problems, but only to begin
exploring the position from which they could be
addressed in a novel and, I believe, more
effective way.
Even though, as I just stated, the present
philosophical intervention can open up a new
direction for thinking, there is a sense in which
the position that I will articulate is traceable
to the very origins of Western civilization.
julia sushytska
WHAT IS EASTERNEUROPE?a philosophical approach
ISSN 0969-725X print/ISSN1469-2899 online/10/030053^13� 2010 Taylor & Francis and the Editors of AngelakiDOI:10.1080/0969725X.2010.536010
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So, I am merely trying to think anew something
that has always already been there, albeit
marginal and for the most part forgotten.
In the fifth century before the common era,
one of the most thought-provoking as well as
the briefest philosophical texts was composed by
the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus. This is
what he wrote: edizesamen emeoyton or ‘‘I went
in search of myself.’’ Since topos or the place will
prove to be significant here, a brief geographical
note about Heraclitus is in order: he is writing
from Ephesus – a Greek colony in Asia Minor,
present-day Turkey. In other words, Heraclitus
thinks from the margins of the Greek world,
from its limits that are also unusual: Ephesus is
separated from mainland Greece by the Aegean
Sea, and during Heraclitus’ lifetime is under the
rule of the Persian Empire.3
Apart from being astoundingly brief,
Heraclitus’ texts are famous for their enigmatic
quality. For instance, a sentence is composed in
such a manner that it can be read in two different
ways, and Heraclitus does not indicate which one
should be given preference. As a result, his works
arouse in their readers the feeling of subtle
dissatisfaction: they are not incomprehensible,
they contain no outright contradictions, and yet
there is something in them that resists facile
understanding. Two things follow from this: I
need to exert effort to grasp his works, and still
they are always more than any given articulation
of them. In fact, because the texts are enigmas,
every attempt at their elucidation verges on
destruction of the multilayered, intricate cre-
ations. After all, the riddle cannot say, and, more
importantly, do what it does once divested of the
ambiguity inherent in it; that is, it can no longer
provoke us to think on our own, or prevent us
from stopping at one interpretation. As a result, it
is impossible to acquire exhaustive understanding
of Heraclitus’ sayings. Instead, they seduce us
into trying to think them yet again and again.4
This is exactly why what follows is an attempt
to think this particular text – an attempt that
pretends to be neither complete nor final.
I went in search of myself. This sentence is the
entire work. It has no prequel and no sequel.
Even though the scholarly tradition refers to it
as a ‘‘fragment,’’ and more specifically, Fragment
101, it is not an excerpt of a larger work, and
its number is no more than a convenient way to
refer to it. So, Heraclitus writes ‘‘went in search,’’
yet does not tell us anything about the results of
this undertaking. If it were not in the past tense –
Aorist, to be precise, a tense that in Greek
announces the ‘‘once and for all’’ character of this
action – then it would be more understandable
why nothing else is being said about it. But the
decisiveness and irrevocability of the action seem
to promise something else, trigger expectations
of some further disclosure. This promise is
unfulfilled – we will never find out, for instance,
whether Heraclitus found himself. Or, at least,
so it seems.
But such a lack of resolution encourages the
idea that this kind of a search cannot have a
definite outcome. And if there is no precise
end point to this journey, then the self cannot be
found; there is no fixed self, or the self is the
unending process of becoming the self.
Still, it is I who set out on this search. That is,
I am always already the self, at least once I made
the decision to find myself. So that I am never the
self, and always already the self: a paradoxical
thought, no doubt; very much in the style that
made Heraclitus both infamous and celebrated.
The ambiguity or obscurity of this saying is
tied to what might be called the doubling of
the self, so that one of the selves seems to be
excessive. For if there is the ‘‘I,’’ then there is no
need for the search. But, on the other hand, the
absence of the self at the beginning of this
journey would render the search impossible.
Far from containing a contradiction, the saying
reveals another truth about this kind of a journey:
since without a self the search is impossible, this
self must be imperfect – the amateur self.
This briefest of philosophical opuses suggests
that the decision to search, or the act of
undertaking this task, is what constitutes the
self, however provisional or imperfect. As a
result, the definition of the self would be: a being
that decided to search for itself. Once again we
encounter the idea that the self is movement, the
potentially infinite process of becoming the
self, and yet, simultaneously, there is the self,
i.e., the movement is not that from nothing
to being.5
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I went in search of myself. As already noted,
if I have to look for myself, then I am not this
self, at least not fully. But this also entails that
I am searching for the other, who is ultimately
my other. The search, then, consists in coming
to recognize the indispensability of the other for
the self – for there to be the self. It is only in this
way that I can hope to find myself. Yet it is still
the case that the search does not have an end:
there is always the other – another other – waiting
to be confronted. This idea comes to occupy a
prominent place in the theories of the philoso-
phers writing long after Heraclitus, most notably
in Hegel’s work, but also in the discourses of the
last few decades, and yet it is already present in
the saying written 2,500 years ago.6
At the origins of Western culture lies dormant
the idea of the self as the being that is in search of
itself. The notion of borderlands will awaken it,
or help it get a hold of us, leading us directly into
Eastern Europe.
Taken literally, borderlands are the lands
around a border. In contrast to the border that
is supposed to be definite and precise, border-
lands cannot be easily circumscribed or delim-
ited.7 Since a border distinguishes between the
two – and thus, between the many – borderlands
are the territories in which several different
cultures, ethnicities, religious communities, etc.
exist side by side. In contrast to borders that are
supposed to entail separation and the absence of
contact between these two or many, the notion of
borderlands allows for, if not presupposes, some
kind of interaction, although some other factor
needs to come into play in order for this
co-existence to be constructive.8
This is an ordinary understanding of borders
and borderlands. However, in her book
Borderlands/La Frontera, Anzaldua expands and
enriches the notion of borderlands to account for
the creative process that takes place in the course
of an encounter between several different cultures
or identities. Borderlands comes to mean the
interaction of the cultures that in some cases have
been living side by side for centuries, but also
the kind of self that is created and creates
itself through this encounter. Borderlands is
the surpassing and trespassing of borders; it is
transforming the two or the many into a new one.
Anzaldua’s passionate and vivid writings make
exceedingly clear that this new self is anything
but stable or final. Rather, the self that emerges
in the borderlands needs to be constantly
re-created; after all, as a result of each transfor-
mative encounter we still get a self and an
other, however different from the self and the
other of before. Moreover, the process of creation
in the borderlands is always dangerous: to make
room for the new, all that is stable and secure
must be abandoned, destroyed. I have to
renounce the customary, traditional ways of
being in the world; I have to leave behind my
people, my ethnos.
Borderlands are the territories on both sides of
the border, and this border does not have to be a
national one, although more often than not
precisely such a border incites engagement with
the other because it cuts into the flesh of the
cultures surrounding it. In her work Anzaldua
reveals what we might call the psychical dimen-
sion of such empirical places, and so opens up the
possibility of their becoming the places of
transformation, the sites for the emergence of
the new. That instead of being limited by the
border – be it national, ethnic, religious, etc. – we
come to play the role of a demiurge who tirelessly
creates new selves, and in doing so reshapes
the world.
Anzaldua’s work demonstrates a way to trans-
form sterile and alienating borders into life-
granting borderlands that defy the opposition
between the physical and the psychical, between
reality and fiction, civilization and barbarism,
and, most importantly, between oneself and the
radically different Other. If the rigid borders
distinguish and separate, reinforcing the ossified
difference, then borderlands enable us to re-create
ourselves through the encounter with the other.
Such transformation, as Anzaldua points out, is an
alchemical operation in which the basest material
is revealed as the most valuable.
To employ the terminology of the last several
decades, borderlands are home to the event, i.e.,
that which is excessive to a pre-existing order of
things, that which is not subject to cause/effect
relationships, that which is always more.9
Borderlands are places of the encounter
between the self and the other – of that which
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is always excessive, of that in the course of which
the self becomes more than itself. Being the
event, it is not necessitated by anything external
to it, and so can introduce the new into the
existing configurations of the world. The encoun-
ter requires the self to actively engage with the
other – one cannot be a passive recipient of
the encounter. It is I who has to act in order
to activate or actualize this borderlands topos, to
enact the way of being that it embodies or can
enable. This is the case even though certain
political or economic conditions can be more or
less conducive to such creation.10
Borderlands, then, are both a specific place
and the creative activity that happens in this
place. Their materiality or concreteness has its
source in the lands they inhabit, and yet they are
never determined by or reducible to it. The land
itself – however favorable to an encounter – is
nothing without the movement that only the self
can initiate, but always only the self that is
imperfect.
The mere co-existence of multiple identities in
one place does not yet entail or yield the way of
being that I call borderlands. In a book on one of
such places, the Crimea peninsula on the Black
Sea, the author notes:
Peoples who live in communion with other
peoples, for a hundred or a thousand years, do
not always like them – may, in fact, have
always disliked them. As individuals, ‘‘the
others’’ are not strangers but neighbors, often
friends. But my sense of Black Sea life, a sad
one, is that latent mistrust between cultures is
immortal.
He continues:
Necessity, and sometimes fear, binds such
communities together. But within that binding-
strap they remain a bundle of disparate
groups – not a helpful model for the ‘‘multi-
ethnic society’’ of our dreams. (Ascherson 9)
Mere co-presence in or sharing of the same
territory, and even friendly co-existence does not
entail creative engagement; it does not render the
encounter with the other necessary, but merely
makes it possible; in the best case it constitutes
favorable conditions for it.
In Shimon Reidlich’s book Together and
Apart in Brzezany he puts forward a similar
idea when discussing three of the cultures that
inhabit Eastern European borderlands: centuries-
long co-existence of different ethnic groups does
not in and of itself produce understanding or
recognition, does not yield the self that con-
tinually creates itself out of difference. The
situation merely establishes the conditions for
the emergence of such a self.
Borderlands are more than the material or
empirical situation in yet another way: they do
not disappear or appear because of institutional
support or the lack thereof. Social, political, or
other kinds of circumstances can be more or less
favorable; they can constitute a situation that is
either hostile or propitious to the encounter.
They can do nothing to bring it about – it is
impossible to account for the personal effort that
requires and simultaneously calls forward the
self. It is clear, however, that recently virtually
all Western institutions have become more than
unfavorable to the borderlands way of being.
In fact, more often than not the objective of the
West is to forestall the encounter with the other.
What can be a better sign of this than the
wall that is currently being constructed at the
US/Mexico border – it makes concrete the kind of
relationship between the self and the other
that prevails in the West – the non-relationship,
the desire not to live together with or next to the
other. A similar point can be made about the
border between Ukraine and Poland – the border
that separates a former Soviet republic from
the land that has recently become a part of the
EU. Once again, since the fall of the Iron Curtain,
it has become next to impossible for Ukrainians
to travel west of this border. Technically,
anybody is free to cross it; it is just that the
citizens of Ukraine are hindered by ‘‘silly’’
details. For instance, it takes approximately
three days and three nights of standing in line
at the Polish Consulate in Lviv, Ukraine, before
one can even submit all the necessary documents
to a consulate clerk. Some people actually sleep in
front of the consulate, so that here and there
makeshift ‘‘cafes’’ have sprung up – thermoses
lined up on the benches, and next to them
plastic cups.11
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What characterizes borderlands and distin-
guishes them from other kinds of places is that it
is impossible for them to become a part of the
establishment. Being ambiguous by nature, they
resist all kinds of stable structures. Therefore,
no state, and especially not the kind with an
imperialist agenda, can constitute the place of
borderlands. Being a deficiency, a lack, as well as
an acknowledgement of this lack, borderlands are
simply not compatible with an assertion or
presupposition of cultural, ethnic or any other
kind of superiority. Borderlands are a lack,
the other side of which is the creativity of the
self searching for itself. This always incomplete
self creates itself out of difference, and is the
potentially infinite process of such creation.
This is the paradoxical nature of borderlands:
their limit consists in being unlimited; their
incompleteness or ambiguity is their strength.
For it is only the lacking self that is able to
trespass its own limits.
The materiality of borderlands consists of the
several more or less institutionalized identities –
cultures, ethnicities, religious traditions, etc. –
that co-exist in a concrete geographical area, as
well as the history of their interaction. It is topos
– the lands saturated with history – that makes
borderlands specific: there are the borderlands
of the US/Mexico border, so eloquently and
passionately rendered by Anzaldua;12 there is
the Caucasus – the borderlands to which
Mamardashvili acknowledges his indebtedness;
there is Eastern Europe – the borderlands central
to the present discussion.
Like the other embodiments of borderlands,
the way of being that is Eastern Europe is not
reducible to the lines on the map; it does not end
or begin at a specific national border. To mention
merely one reason for this, there is absolutely no
consensus today on how exactly to delimit
Eastern Europe.13 The UN presents a definition
that significantly differs from that of the CIA,14
and neither one of these two coincides with the
ways in which particular countries of non-
Western Europe conceive their geographic iden-
tity, especially because belonging or not to
Eastern Europe is not only a geographic but
also a political and economic issue made opaque
by hundreds of years of history.
But even if an agreement could be reached
as to the definite geographical edges of Eastern
Europe, the most difficult question as to who
ought to count as an Eastern European would still
not be solved. Which generation of those living
in a particular area could legitimately claim
such identity as their own? Moreover, is there an
identity common to, say, the citizens of the Czech
Republic, Estonia, Ukraine, and Poland, and,
if so, how are we to specify it, since it cannot be
traced back to any political or economic institu-
tion in the way one’s national affiliation can?
Thus, an understanding of what Eastern
Europe is can by no means be attained or
exhausted through geographical considerations,
even though it can be traced to a topos, or
land permeated with history. I merely suggest a
direction in which the place of Eastern Europe
can be thought. It would require an entirely
different kind of analysis in order to elucidate
its topos. Provisionally, then, the particularity
of Eastern Europe consists of being situated
in between the steppes to its East – these great
expanses of open grassy areas through which the
winds rush unhindered by any obstacles; this sea
of herbs open to movement – and the forested
and mountainous regions to its West. Both kinds
of landscapes are filled with hundreds of years
of history, with the presence of nomadic peoples
in one, and sedentary populations in the other.15
Eastern Europe is neither one nor the other, but
also both, or rather, as we will see, beyond both.16
Mamardashvili speaks of topos only in passing.
Referencing Proust, he claims that in our youth
we acquire a set of forms, including the spatial
ones, such as the form of the mountains or of the
sky. During the remainder of our lives we come
to understand or give meaning to these forms.
There are formative landscapes or skyscapes
through which later in life we are able to
experience the sky. For Mamardashvili, for
instance, a form of the sky is the sky over the
valley between the Georgian towns of Mtskheta
and Gori that he experienced as a child: its blue
oval covering the oval of the valley embraced
by the mountains. Similarly, a borderlands topos
provides for us a form of the co-existence
of different cultures; the form through which
we could trespass the borders that separate them.
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In the case of Eastern Europe this form is that
of existing together in between the West and its
Others. It is in this way that the topos of Eastern
Europe offers the form in which the self is
the search for itself by means of the encounter
with its other.
It is inevitable that the question arises as to
whether one has to live or even be born in a place
of borderlands in order to be able to embody or
actualize such self that is always incomplete and
acting from the lack of itself. Mamardashvili
does seem to suggest it by connecting the notion
of the place to the formative years of one’s youth.
Yet it is beyond any doubt that somebody can
come to be an Eastern European later in life,
as well as that not all those born in what is
geographically considered to be Eastern Europe
are, in fact, Eastern European. This does not lead
us to dismiss Mamardashvili’s point, but only to
refine our understanding of it: clearly, we cannot
take him literally; that is, cannot understand
‘‘youth’’ temporally. Rather, this term must be
referring to receptivity essential for acquiring
a new form, or for making a certain place a
part of us.
The reason why Mamardashvili, somewhat
misleadingly perhaps, speaks about the spatial
forms is because he is trying to establish that
one does not have to be physically present in a
borderlands topos in order to actualize a certain
way of being. We can ‘‘carry’’ the place with us
precisely because it has become us, and we have
become it.17 Still, this presupposes that at some
point or other I must have a direct experience
of a place. This is the phase in which I acquire
its form, to use Mamardashvili’s terminology,
whereas the second moment – that of creativity –
can happen anywhere, and requires much more
engagement on my part. If openness to a place
can be symbolized by the suppleness of youth,
then the symbol of the second phase is adulthood:
the effort and the determination that goes into
making a decision.
From the above considerations we can distin-
guish three possible positions in relation to a
borderlands topos (even though many more can
be singled out, including the intermediate ones
between those that I will mention). First, one can
live in a place of borderlands, but be entirely
closed off from it; such a person has not and
does not wish to acquire its form. No doubt the
materiality of borderlands can provoke behaviors
even from those oblivious to it, yet it is possible
to resist it, as, for instance, did many Russians
who moved to the Western part of Ukraine after
the Second World War – to the territories that
until the end of this war were a part of Poland.
It was they, rather than the local inhabitants,
who were offered administrative or academic
positions in an effort to subdue the unruly
region. Secondly, there are those open to a given
borderlands topos; they do acquire its spatial
forms, and so develop certain habits or attitudes
that make them Eastern European. Yet because
they never make a conscious decision – the kind
that we encountered in Heraclitus – their way of
being is unstable, and can easily be abandoned:
if the circumstances around them change, if, for
instance, they move from the place that provokes
those behaviors in them, they are no longer able
to take on this particular way of life. Finally, it is
possible to take on a borderlands way of being
consciously.
Let us consider a very concrete example, that
of Lviv, an Eastern European city located 60
kilometers east of the border between Poland and
Ukraine, or since quite recently the boundary
between the EU and a former Soviet republic.18
Currently, the city is within the national limits of
Ukraine, but its precarious thousand-year history
makes it impossible to unambiguously associate
it with merely one identity. It is a city of
borderlands par excellence: to mention only one
aspect of its complex history, in the twentieth
century alone it changed its national affiliation
seven times. For most of Lviv’s populace the
city’s borderlands status is not transparent, and
they are even not fully aware of Lviv’s long and
eventful history of co-existence between different
cultures. Their life in the borderlands is not
thereby less real, and, as we will see in a moment,
it is not an easy kind of life. At the same time,
being born in Lviv or having lived there for a
specific number of years does not guarantee being
able to acquire the position of Eastern Europe, or
to take on that way of being, as not having
been born and lived there or in some other
similarly structured locality does not preclude
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one from taking it up in the future. Instead, the
complex and often ambiguous historical, cultural,
political, and economic situation of this particular
city made possible or likely the emergence of the
borderlands self, i.e., the self that is in constant
search of itself as it lacks one permanent,
completely stable form and is instead the process
of negotiation between several different identities.
The absence of stability makes it impossible to
ever dogmatically assert Eastern European iden-
tity (for instance, to begin forming political or
economic associations on its basis). As a semi-
conscious attitude it is unstable by definition: its
status is that of a correct belief unsustained by
knowledge, to use Plato’s distinction. As such, it
is inherently unstable – the slightest gust of wind
can undermine or overwhelm it. As a conscious
decision it requires continuous confirmation,
it needs to be made anew all the time – after
all, it is a decision to be in the process of
becoming, thus it subverts itself from within.
It is necessary to experience directly a given
topos – a landscape filled with history – to be able
to take on a borderlands way of being in the
world, even though the way of being that is here
called borderlands is not reducible to its topos.
That is, the connection to a topos is never a causal
one. As Merleau-Ponty explains, calling upon an
example provided by Freud: a foreign body
becomes an occasion for an oyster to create a
pearl, rather than being that which causes such
creation (Merleau-Ponty 183 and note). So that
topos as well is an occasion for the creativity of
borderlands.
Why is Eastern Europe beyond any of the
usual dichotomies? Why is it more than the
distinct cultures that comprise it? It is impossible
to be two (or three etc.), i.e., it is impossible to be
a sum, to be both or several selves simulta-
neously. Let us take two examples – one from
antiquity, and one from this past century. Upon
visiting a Greek colony of Olbia in what is now
Ukraine, Herodotus tells a story of Scyles, a
Greek nobleman when in Olbia, and a Scythian
prince outside the city walls. One day his
Scythian companions, having scaled Olbia’s
defensive wall, saw him participating in
Dionysian mysteries. The punishment for his
‘‘treason’’ was death at the hands of his brother.
‘‘Scyles perished because he tried, and failed, to
inhabit two separate worlds simultaneously, and
refused to choose between them’’ (Ascherson 57).
Merleau-Ponty, having established that a
language is never just a language, but a whole
world, claims that one cannot live in two
languages at once:
We may speak several languages, but one
of them always remains the one in which we
live. In order completely to assimilate a
language, it would be necessary to make the
world which it expresses one’s own, and one
never does belong to two worlds at once.
(Merleau-Ponty 218)
Merleau-Ponty cites T.E. Lawrence’s experience
of living in the Arab culture: it would approx-
imate madness, writes Lawrence, to try to
reconcile two cultures.
Indeed, it is impossible, and it can only lead to
madness to try to hold simultaneously that which
is different; to be the self and the other at once.
That is precisely why both must be transformed,
why the new self must go beyond either one. It is
not a matter of making a journey from the one to
the other, as Ascherson suggests in his book,
providing the examples of the voyages from the
Old to the New World. Although such journeys
have been and still are possible, borderlands is a
different kind of transformation that consists in
creation of the third. Even though it does not lead
to madness, it might occasionally appear to verge
on it. Read metaphorically, Scyles’ mistake – a
fatal one – consisted in trying to lead a double
life, of not being able to give birth to something
new.
At this point it is necessary to introduce
another term: the way of being that is border-
lands is the philosophical way of being. The self
that made – and continues to make – a conscious
decision to search for itself is the philosopher.
Such self decided to be imperfect, and as
Mamardashvili points out, echoing Socrates, the
philosopher defines herself as the one who knows
that she does not know.
Philosophy, concludes Mamardashvili, is
professional ignorance (Lm— mnzk
lekhnhvel 73). It is knowing that one does
not know (and, we might add, also knowing how
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not to know). That is, a philosopher or the self,
since in this context the two are synonymous, is
not an ignoramus, not an absence of the self, but
the one who has acquired the knowledge that he
or she does not know what, for instance, virtue is.
That is, the philosopher recognizes his or her
limitedness, and in doing so can move beyond it.
Such recognition is the only techne that the
philosopher possesses; this is his or her only
professional skill (92). In other words, the
philosopher is a professional amateur.
To put it another way, the philosopher qua
philosopher does not belong to a nation – the
philosopher does not know what everyone else
knows by virtue of belonging to a given culture.
The act of becoming the self goes beyond the
limitations of nationality, culture, or religious
tradition. Instead, it has source only in itself; it
has no ground to stand on (62). The borderlands
self is excessive self, and its creativity surpasses
any of the cultures that constitute its place,
as well as their sum. It is in this sense that
Mamardashvili can speak about cosmopolitanism:
the philosopher is the citizen of that which does
not have borders, whose nation or polis is the
whole kosmos. Becoming the philosopher is
trespassing all sorts of borders, and especially
those of nation-states. That is why there can be
no such thing as a national philosopher, accord-
ing to Mamardashvili, who states that his being
a philosopher is in no way reducible to his being a
citizen of Georgia.
The borderlands self is the philosophical self
whose borders are the limits of what is, or being.
Insofar as Eastern Europe is the act of the self
creating itself, it is imperfect. It is a lack or
insufficiency, yet this is precisely its strength
and the source of its perfection. Recall that at the
beginning of the essay we discussed the doubling
of the self: it is the absence of the self, for
otherwise there would be no need for the search;
if there were no self, then the search would be
impossible to begin with. What we get at this
point is the manner in which both of these can be
simultaneously. Eastern Europe brings together
what we might in the Greek fashion name the
divine and the mortal by turning the self’s
finitude into a strength; only the one who knows
that he or she is imperfect can move beyond his
or her limitations. It is because of this perfect
imperfection that Eastern Europe, like other
borderlands topoi, is a place of creativity. This
also entails that it cannot be exoticized. Not
merely ought not, but cannot: it is too unsightly.
The other side of its Janus head is the head of the
Medusa that repeatedly undermines its divine,
demiurgic power. Medusa’s look petrifies, but in
doing so it makes impossible the kind of
ossification that is gradual and inconspicuous.
Such a self-destructive tendency on the part of
Eastern Europe renders it deinos – terrible and
dangerous, but also marvelous and clever;
Odysseus, for instance, was called that. And
nobody would probably dispute the fact that his
life was a precarious one. So too it is difficult to
be Eastern European, and, for instance, many
of those who populate those lands are willing to
leave them for more stable dwelling places.
To be an Eastern European is to be
an amateur, a dilettante, in any case a non-
professional.19 This is not to say that there are no
professionals in the countries that are often
identified as Eastern European, but that this
particular way of being is incompatible with the
ideal of expertise and competence that is claimed
by and strived towards in the West. Such
amateurism is divine or perfect precisely because
it leaves ample room for creativity, because the
constraints of precision and efficiency do not
hinder it from acknowledging its fallibility,
uncertainty, its lack of exact knowledge. This
‘‘all too human’’ character of Eastern Europe is
treacherous: the bribes, the cruelty, the negli-
gence, to mention but few of its Medusa
instantiations.
Let me in a summary fashion go through some
aspects of the position that I have been calling
Eastern Europe, and then spend some time
elaborating them. In doing so I will be repeating
certain of the points that have already been made,
although repeating with a difference – a very
Eastern European thing to do. As Jan Patocka
writes:
to reiterate does not mean to do the same thing
that was already here once before; to reiterate
means to attempt to, through new ways, new
words, new methods, say the same thing.
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We have to say what is, again, over and over,
and always in a different way, but it always
has to be the same thing! (Patocka 90;
emphasis in original)
Eastern Europe is a lack of exhaustive knowl-
edge. The kind of understanding that charac-
terizes it has visible gaps, its memory is flawed, its
definitions imprecise, and articulations inexact.
Yet, since knowledge is by nature incomplete –
after all, it is impossible to account for everything
that is – the position of Eastern Europe is one that
makes visible the finitude of our knowledge –
something that the West has tended to forget
throughout its long and eventful history.
Eastern Europe is characterized by flexibility
or suppleness. It has no definite form, although at
the same time it is not entirely shapeless: it is a
constant negotiation between several different
forms that, eventually, takes us beyond any one
of them or their (impossible) sum.
In fact, Eastern Europe is the presence or the
existence of the other inside the self: it is the
presence of the non-West within the West,
and vice versa. After all, it is most certainly not
the West, and yet not its Other.
Eastern Europe is the in between: neither
civilized nor wholly barbaric, neither orderly nor
entirely chaotic, neither cultured nor in the state
of nature. It is rather the movement that
underlies these dichotomies. Neither familiar
nor exotic, or both familiar and exotic, it
embodies the oneness of the West and its Other
and becomes a source of their possible harmony.
Eastern Europe is being in constant transition,
not having a respite, not being able to stop
(the much-sought-after perpetuum mobile).
Thus, Eastern Europe is also violence,
although of a creative kind: the destruction that
must accompany any becoming, the agony of
giving birth to oneself.
The position of Eastern Europe is ultimately
an unstable or porous one. It is not standing
firmly on the ground; it is a lack of constancy. An
Eastern European is always split between at least
two – and often many – selves. To be an Eastern
European is to be other to oneself; it is to be
falling through the holes of the usual dichoto-
mies, including the opposition between the West
and the East, the First and the Third World. It is
to be unable to easily locate or define oneself.
Because the other is always already within me,
I am never strictly speaking an unambiguous
or evident self. Eastern Europe is having the
border inside rather than outside oneself, hence
the name ‘‘borderlands’’ – which by definition
refers to the lands encompassing or enveloping
the border. These lands, unlike the borderline
that they surround, cannot be specified metri-
cally – there is no precise point at which they
begin or end.
‘‘Eastern Europe’’ names the other who is
not radically other (i.e., who is not Other):
as I have already mentioned, it is not non-Europe
or non-West, but neither does it belong to the
West. Radical difference silences both the self
and the other, for it entails inaccessibility.
Communication and understanding with the
radical Other are impossible, even inconceivable.
Since radical otherness is unrecognizable – the
Other cannot be the self – violence becomes easy.
In fact, making the other radically different is the
ultimate form of violence. To enter the West,
a non-Westerner is pressured to give up his or her
non-Western ways of life. What is particular
about Eastern Europe is that it can sneak in,
infiltrate unnoticed, destabilize from within. This
is its great advantage – it cannot be easily turned
into incommensurable difference. It makes
tangible the possibility of understanding the
other, which, of course, does not mean that it is
an easy way to be.
In fact, as already mentioned, Eastern Europe
does not lend itself to exoticization: the life on or
around the border is a precarious one. Belonging
to neither side, to neither one of the several
worlds, I am neither a European nor a non-
European, neither a citizen of the West nor from
the Third World; I don’t have a culture unless I
create my own. Everywhere I am a sans-papier,
even in my own country: I cannot be fully
identified with any given nationality, for there is
always a remainder; there is always an aspect of
me that cannot be reduced to any one identity.
As an Eastern European I don’t have my own
castle where I can hide not only from my enemies
but also from the vicissitudes of the weather. Not
an easy situation to be in, it is exactly the lack of
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such a castle – of a culture or an identity – that
allows me to remain flexible, that becomes the
source of the new selves. Since I don’t have and
don’t belong, I am compelled to create; I have an
incentive to re-invent.
Moreover, because I cannot claim as my own
any one side of the usual dichotomy, any one
identity, I thereby enable a vantage point from
which the ephemeral or limited nature of all
identities can be discerned, from which the
instability of the self and culture becomes
apparent. Since a stable self is an appearance
that emerges at the moment when I stop the
movement of becoming, there can be no such self
if there is no end to this movement. This point is
symbolically represented in the fact that Eastern
Europe cannot be easily circumscribed or limited
geographically.
So, to be an Eastern European is to embody a
truth that the self is never coherent, but rather is
always in need of being created or in the process
of transformation. Because the self is never a
given, in order to become one I must first
undertake an arduous task of self-creation.
Mamardashvili notes that the West is in the
habit of assuming a coherent self; a Westerner
learns to accept its rich culture passively, takes it
for granted. To mention perhaps the most
obvious example, in the West we all think of
the Greeks as of our glorious origins, and thus
don’t remember that significant effort is required
to understand them on our own, anew. We know
that Homer is great without having to first
rediscover his greatness. It is indisputable that
the West has a long and remarkable tradition of
articulating or forging new selves – the tradition
that can be traced from Socrates through
Descartes all the way to Derrida and Deleuze –
yet the West is thereby always on the brink of
being engulfed by this tradition, by forgetting
how much effort is necessary to create a self.
Traditions are dangerous insofar as they lead us
to believe that simply by being born into one we
do not need to construct our own culture and
identity.20 This is exactly what Descartes’s
method of doubt is designed to combat: with it
Descartes attempts to free himself of assuming
the self founded on anything other than his own
effort of thinking.21
Mamardashvili claims that Europe – or, we
might say more generally, the West – is weary of
carrying around its stifling burden of tradition, of
cultural heritage. In fact, both the West and its
Other are in their own distinct way squeezed into
a restricting corset: each has to play a role, be it
of an imperialist oppressor, or of a suffering
victim. Yet the West seems to be especially
oblivious to the constraining nature of its role.
Such forgetfulness too is an act, and a lot of
energy is exerted on forgetting that an identity is
merely an appearance of one. As Mamardashvili
writes, ‘‘a human being does not exist, but
establishes herself’’ or ‘‘a human being is first
and foremost the continuous effort to be a human
being’’ (J‘i ~ nmlhk‘} hjmpm h} 313).
Eastern Europe is a never-ending process
of coming-to-be22 that brings to light a truth
that there is no stable self, that a fixed identity is
only an appearance. It is in this respect that
Eastern Europe is able to understand the West
better than it could ever comprehend itself: being
neither the West nor non-West it embodies the
idea that the self is movement, and so any self or
any culture that desires its own permanent
stability is ultimately heading towards its demise.
In this sense Eastern Europe is in a more
advantageous position: it does not have a past or
history, and such a lack moves it to create in the
present.23 Because Eastern Europe is the absence
of cultural heritage, of tradition, I cannot assume
that I have a self, unless, of course, it is being
created by me. But even my own creations have a
doubtful status, being undermined at the very
moment they are forged.
To return for a moment to Anzaldua’s
profound writings, her work is bloody and
violent, and cannot be anything but that, since
to acknowledge the other within me is to
acknowledge a rift, a tear, a wound. It is also to
acknowledge the impending destruction of the
self, or at least the demise of the self’s seeming
stability. What has solidified into a form of the
self has to cease to exist in order for the new self
to become. This new self will remain new only for
a moment before it too will have to confront its
own disruption. Such creative violence must be
distinguished from the violence of the rigid
borders – the violence of death, rigor mortis.24
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The double-faced Janus has already appeared in
this text as one of the symbols of Eastern Europe
– the god of the threshold, of liminality, and of
transition. He is split: there is a borderline that
runs through his very core, tearing him apart
from within. Yet, at the same time, this rift
within him is his greatest advantage: his vision
spans 360 degrees.
What Eastern Europe enables us to see,
therefore, is that the border between the self
and the other ought to remain supple, i.e., I must
be always open to change. After all, Eastern
Europe is the continuously renewed encounter
between the self and the other. It shows that the
difference itself is constantly shifting ground,
becoming other than itself: the difference
emerges and re-emerges in the course of the
transformation of the self that engaged with it.25
The rigidity of borders stifles it, although they
can never end it altogether: their increasing
impenetrability – for instance, the erection of the
thousand-mile wall between the USA and Mexico,
or the obstructions, at times insurmountable,
that block the path of Ukrainian citizens who
wish to travel West – only emphasizes the failure
to separate once and for all, to radically
distinguish one from its shadowy double, and
thus the failure to suffocate the self; after all, only
the dead do not have a shadow.
The position of Eastern Europe confirms the
fact that the other is first of all within me, and
that therefore I ought to transform my internal
border into borderlands of the encounter.
Acknowledging the power of Eastern Europe –
the strength of its repeated failure – the West
needs to open itself up to new formulations of the
self, which includes rethinking its borders and
policies around them. This project is especially
urgent because today it is so difficult for the West
to even conceive borders as borderlands, let alone
create conditions that would help to enable and
sustain the flexibility that is necessary for them to
be borderlands. It is exactly this inability to
imagine the alternative to its current relationship
with the other that is most troubling, and that
this essay intends to challenge.26
Consciously assuming the imperfect way of
being that is Eastern Europe leads to the
emergence of the new self that does not shy
away from the terrible and marvelous – deinos –
encounter with the other. Such a process begins
with a decision to acknowledge that I am already
other to myself, and that therefore what it most
feared has already happened: I
do not have a culture, my
tradition is lost, my blood has
never been pure. I am an
immigrant in my own land.
notes1 From the very outset I would like to note that,insofar as the present discussion is concerned, themany differences between Western Europe andtheWest takenmoregenerally recede to theback-ground. So, even though in the work that, as Ihope, will spring from and build upon this essayitmightbe necessary to think through this distinc-tion, here Iwill use the two terms interchangeably.The symposium entitled ‘‘What is the Identityof Europe?’’ was held in Paris in 1988. Cf.‘‘La Responsabilite¤ europe¤ enne’’ in Europe sansravage. Symposiuminternational sur l’identite¤ culturelleeurope¤ enne (Paris: Albin Michel, 1988) 201^05.The presentation was also published in Russianin a book by Mamardashvili: ‘‘Fbomne—pi‘~
mqbeqpqbellmpq{’’ [Responsibility of Europe] inJ‘i~nmlhk‘} hjmpm h} 311^19.
2 I am using this rather unfortunate dichotomy,but only to motion towards a way in which weneed tomove beyond it.
3 Another curious fact about Heraclitus’ birth-place in Ionia is that the Greek colonies on thenorthern coastof the Black Sea (now the territoryof Ukraine that partially makes up the place ofEastern Europe) were established by the IonianGreeks rather than the Athenians. SeeAscherson 50.
4 For an excellent study of Heraclitus’ thought seeDilcher. I analyze the role of enigmas in incitingphilosophical thought in my work on Parmenidesand Plato.
5 This brings tomind another saying by Heraclitus(Fragment 12): ‘‘As they step into the same rivers,other and still other waters flow upon them’’(translation from Kahn). This saying has been sogrossly misinterpreted as to yield the idea ‘‘every-thing flows’’ that attached itself to Heraclitus like
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burdock. However, Heraclitus points out that therivers are the same: they do not change eventhough their waters are continuously different.There is no contradiction here: in one respectthe rivers are unchanging, whereas in anotherthey are constantmovement.
6 Both celebrated and criticized, Hegel’s Lord/Servant Dialectic (or, as it is more frequently andless accurately translated, the Master/SlaveDialectic) shows that in order to be the self Ineed the other’s recognition that can only resultfrom the encounter with him or her. However,to become this self by way of establishing the dif-ference from the other I first need to acknowledgeor come to knowmyonenesswith this other; thatis, I need to recognize that the two are first andforemost one. I need to realize that the other isthe self. This is not an assertion of my identitywith the other in the sense of my similitudeto him or her, but rather of the oneness thatpreserves our difference.Here I am relying on thenotion of oneness as developed in my work onParmenides and Plato.
7 Borderlands are by definition ambiguous, forthere is no precise point at which they end orbegin. Their existence is paradoxical: they have ashape, but not any specific shape.
8 In another context it would be worthwhileto consider the fact that all borders ought to beborderlands, precisely because strict or impene-trable borders eventually lead to death or ossifica-tion of given cultures. This follows directly fromanalysis like that of Hegel.
9 One of the recent elaborations of the event canbe found in Alain Badiou’s Beingand Event.
10 Herewe encounter a truth that Descartes wastrying to convey in his often misunderstood‘‘I think, therefore I am’’: only I can unify beingand thinking, only my effort of thought enablesme to be.
11This was, at least, the case in the spring and thesummer of 2009.Perhaps by now the consulate hasmoved to its new location ^ the monster of con-temporary design surrounded by the city’s ArtNouveau buildings. Yet it seems unlikely that theinsufferable queues have disappeared.
12 In Anzaldu¤ a’s case the place is the land aroundthe US/Mexico border, the territories that untilabout one and a half centuries ago were a part of
Mexico, and only in the last decade or so becamesystematicallymarked as belonging to the USA.
13 The Ural Mountains are supposed to be thegeographical border between Europe and Asia,which would entail that, for instance,Ukraine is apart of Central and not Eastern Europe.
14 According to the UN Group of Expertson Geographical Names, Poland is not a part ofEastern Europe, but Ukraine is both a part ofEastern Europe and ‘‘East Central’’ Europe.Thereis no Central Europe in this taxonomy.
15 Undoubtedly, this is an abstraction, if only forthe reason that in most of Ukraine, for instance,the steppes are long since gone, the land havingbeen settled and cultivated. But this is exactly thereasonwhy a different level of analysis is necessaryto determine the exact nature of this place.Yet thefact that Eastern Europe is still in between isundeniable.
16 Mamardashvili points out that the specificity ofGeorgia’s topos is joyful tragicality, and connectsthis characteristic with the historical fact thatafter the thirteenth century Georgia has had tofocus on surviving; it has had to struggle for itslife and its identity, and yet has made its unspokenrulenever to complain: one oughtnotbe aburden,oughtnot to try to pass on to others the difficultyof his or her own situation.Mamardashvili explainsthat this position or way of being is reached onlyby passing through utter desolation. Cf. his bookLm—mnzklekhnhvel 65^66.
17 Cf. an interview with Merab Mamardashvili:‘‘Ndhlmvepqbm ^ km~ nom epph~ . . .’’ [Solitude ismy Profession], recorded by Sjdhp Rhomlp (Phc‘)Cepl‘,1990, available5http://www.philosophy.ru/library/mmk/odinoch.html4 (accessed 7 Nov.2009). Also published in Merab Mamardashvili,Nveoi pmboekellm— ebomne—pim—
hjmpm hh (Moscow: Oomcoepp-Ro‘dhuh~,2010).
18 An excellent analysis of the historical situationof this particular city that exposed several aspectsof its borderland identity was presented by theLviv-Krakow journalist and writer ZannaSloniowska on 4 March 2009 at the University ofRedlands.
19 Hal Hartley’s film Amateur (1994) comes tomind. It raises the question of what happens tothe self and the world when one is not a
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professional.Both of itsmain characters (playedbyMartin Donovan and Isabelle Huppert) are ama-teurs: a criminal and a pornographer loses hismemory and with it his professionalism, and anex-nun is convinced that she is on a specialmissionfrom God, but turns out to be completely ineptat accomplishing this ‘‘mission.’’
20 As Hume famously argues, the fact that some-thing occurred in the past does not entail abso-lutely anything insofar as the future is concerned.
21 Yet Descartes’ thought so quickly ^ alreadyduring his life ^ turns into Cartesianism. Andtoday, especially, a great effort needs to be madeto revivify it.
22 The term used by Mamardashvili ispk‘lmbjelhe.
23 To reiterate, the way of being that is EasternEurope does not have a past, even though the dis-tinct cultures foundwithin its lands doubtlessly do.
24 At this point chapter 76 from Lao-Tzu’s TaoTeh Ching comes to mind:
When a man is living, he is soft and supple.When he is dead, he becomes hard and rigid.When a plant is living, it is soft and tender.When it is dead, it becomes withered and dry.Hence, the hard and rigid belongs to the com-pany of the dead:The soft and supple belongs to the company ofthe living.Therefore a mighty army tends to fall by itsownweight,Just as dry wood is ready for the axe.Themight and great will be laid low;The humble andweak will be exalted.
(From Tao Teh Ching, trans. John C.H. Wu(Boston: Shambhala, 2006) 171)
25 Gilles Deleuze’s term for this is difference initself (see Deleuze).
26 Recent expansion of the EU does not qualify asan instance of such an effort to open oneself toanother precisely because in this case the criter-ion for inclusion is sameness. Changing bordersinto borderlands does not entail erasing them,and with them any differences between the twoselves or nations.On the contrary, the emergenceof flexible borders entails activation and enablingof these differences. Which means that, at leastduring the first encounters with the other, the
differences will seem to intensify. After all, at thepresent moment neither the First nor the ThirdWorld confronts the actual differences, butmerely its own distorted image, i.e., the differ-ences solidified into prejudices.
