Interview with Gianni Vattimo

EUROPA: It is increasingly common on the left to incur into a feeling of frustration and resignation towards the European project. Recent issues of Le Monde Diplomatique paint the European Union as a neoliberal war machine. You seem yourself to have lost some of your initial enthusiasm. But how can we respond to this criticism? Is it possible to see in Europe, in times of increasing irrelevance and impotence of the nation state, the only possibility of governing globalisation?

GIANNI VATTIMO: I don’t think it is possible to govern globalisation. If we look at the WTO, or indeed at the economic directives of the European Union, we will find them lacking all public consent. European citizens are against the laws governing economic integration because they see them more as a threat than an opportunity. France recently rejected the treaty precisely for these reasons: fear of the Polish plumber taking the job of French workers. The only way to govern globalisation is that of an equal balance between great powers, as it was before 1989. Today we are, European Union included, subjects to the decision of the World Bank, which is to say, the United States. It is just to address this imbalance that on the 12th of October 2007 the new “Banco del Sur” has been created, proposed by Chavez and with the participation of seven South American countries.

It is true, I was enthusiastic myself when I was first elected as MEP; but precisely this experience as a member of Parliament, from within, has enabled me to see how this community, such as it has been formed, is not much more than the “neoliberal war machine” you mentioned. The feeling of resignation you describe is the awareness that the European Union is not much more than a new office of the World Bank.

EUROPA: In an article published on La Stampa during the permanence of the Italian contingent in Iraq, you are led to theorise a European intervention with the aim of substituting the presence of American troops with that of a truly neutral contingent. But then, beyond the specificities of this proposal, yours is surely a call for a Europe more present in the world. This Europe, however, will have to show characteristics that may markedly distinguish it, as you write, as a true “third way”. What should this “European difference” be based upon?

GV: The only alternative today to the imperialist politics of the United States is to be found in those South American countries I just mentioned. I still do not see the alternative in Asia or in the Middle East, as those countries are not yet able to unite. It is true that recently Russia, China and Iran are attempting to forge not just economic but military agreements, but it is too early to make any predictions. In South America, instead, there truly is an agreement and a mutual help that many Europeans would like to have here. If before I thought of or at least hoped for a European difference, now that difference I found in South America. I am not alone in this; it is something Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein agree on. One can intervene militarily only if the majority of the invaded country is in agreement. If the United States has been able to stabilise Europe in less time than it is taking them to conquer Iraq it is just because they found the favour of the population. The hope for a European difference is none else than the hope that someone may block American interventions, aimed almost always at imposing their own concerns. It was Kissinger who remarked that Americans have no friends, but only interests.

EUROPA: May we draw aspiration from the very process of European integration to delineate a new conception of “global responsibility” based on multilateralism, transnationalism, and the attempt to supersede the merely “tribal” and particularistic logic of the nation state? Can Europe return to place the just at the centre of its international role?

GV: Europe will begin to have an international role the day it will decide to listen to its citizens. Now the majority of Europeans have no interest in Nato missions, or in the politics that Europe may express. This majority of Europeans is only angry because it sees in the Union an imposition of rules contrasting with that diversity that belongs to all European countries. Let us be honest: the only globalisation there is, is that of the market, not of citizenship. And in addition, in this globalisation the products of the industries of developed countries are favoured. I am in agreement with you that it would be beautiful to find in Europe the foundations for a so-called perpetual peace; but as Europe is still behind Nato, still friend of the Bush administration, and everyday more enmeshed in the neoliberal market, we have to admit the hopes are few.

EUROPA: In The Transparent Society you argue that little remains of the great utopias of the artistic avant-gardes of the twentieth century. You instead suggest thinking in terms of “heterotopias”, encouraging the expression of a community without the exclusion of another. Can one postulate the idea of a pan-European cultural avant-garde that may truly open up the possibility of a new understanding of the European “community”?

GV: A society that does note exclude another is a community of differences, but today the European community is little else than the limit of differences. In the end, why were Italy and Spain amongst the first to join the Union? Because their role is precisely that of regulating and limiting the access of the “different”, which in this case is to say Africans. You see, if we take the example of Chavez once again, we can understand how he may be seen to promote a politics of difference: he helps countries like Argentina, ruined by the World Bank, he exchanges doctors for oil with Cuba, sends oil to the poor in the Unites States for their winter heating, exchanges oil for university staff with the mayor of London. This is a true politics of difference.

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