From: Rakesh Bhandari (rakeshb@STANFORD.EDU)
Date: Mon Jan 05 2004 - 12:30:02 EST
>If there is a mechanism for the preservation of a labor aristocracy,
>perhaps immigration controls are just that.
>Rakesh
We, the People of Europe? : Reflections on Transnational Citizenship
by Etienne Balibar (Author)
Editorial Reviews
From the Inside Flap
"This is clearly one of the most prodigious political accomplishments
of our time. In open and engaging prose, Balibar offers a serious and
thoroughgoing study of the problem of what constitutes citizenship
under changing conditions of immigration in Europe. His critique is
accompanied by a political vision of democracy at once chastened and
hopeful." (Judith Butler, University of California, Berkeley, author
of The Psychic Life of Power)
"An extremely important book. Anything Balibar writes is sure to find
an extremely eager audience in the United States. But the subject of
this book--the new politics of immigration and racism in a newly
unifying Europe, the very real threat that unification will mean a
European version of apartheid, and the possibility that a
transnational political counter-subject ("we, the people of Europe")
can emerge to oppose globalization--is even more topical than those
Balibar has led us to expect from him. His striking and sometimes
dazzling commentaries on the various frameworks and discourses at
play will be of immediate interest to readers in a wide range of
fields." (Bruce Robbins, Columbia University, author of The Servant's
Hand) --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From the Back Cover
"This is clearly one of the most prodigious political accomplishments
of our time. In open and engaging prose, Balibar offers a serious and
thoroughgoing study of the problem of what constitutes citizenship
under changing conditions of immigration in Europe. His critique is
accompanied by a political vision of democracy at once chastened and
hopeful." (Judith Butler, University of California, Berkeley, author
of The Psychic Life of Power)
"An extremely important book. Anything Balibar writes is sure to find
an extremely eager audience in the United States. But the subject of
this book--the new politics of immigration and racism in a newly
unifying Europe, the very real threat that unification will mean a
European version of apartheid, and the possibility that a
transnational political counter-subject ("we, the people of Europe")
can emerge to oppose globalization--is even more topical than those
Balibar has led us to expect from him. His striking and sometimes
dazzling commentaries on the various frameworks and discourses at
play will be of immediate interest to readers in a wide range of
fields." (Bruce Robbins, Columbia University, author of The Servant's
Hand)
Book Description
Étienne Balibar has been one of Europe's most important philosophical
and political thinkers since the 1960s. His work has been vastly
influential on both sides of the Atlantic throughout the humanities
and the social sciences. In We, the People of Europe?, he expands on
themes raised in his previous works to offer a trenchant and
eloquently written analysis of "transnational citizenship" from the
perspective of contemporary Europe. Balibar moves deftly from state
theory, national sovereignty, and debates on multiculturalism and
European racism, toward imagining a more democratic and less
state-centered European citizenship.
Although European unification has progressively divorced the concepts
of citizenship and nationhood, this process has met with formidable
obstacles. While Balibar seeks a deep understanding of this critical
conjuncture, he goes beyond theoretical issues. For example, he
examines the emergence, alongside the formal aspects of European
citizenship, of a "European apartheid," or the reduplication of
external borders in the form of "internal borders" nurtured by
dubious notions of national and racial identity. He argues for the
democratization of how immigrants and minorities in general are
treated by the modern democratic state, and the need to reinvent what
it means to be a citizen in an increasingly multicultural,
diversified world. A major new work by a renowned theorist, We, the
People of Europe? offers a far-reaching alternative to the usual
framing of multicultural debates in the United States while also
engaging with these debates.
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