Tsvetan Todorov’s death opens a big void and leaves a great legacy at the same time. The Bulgarian-born and French-national writer and philosopher passed away in February 2017, shortly after – certainly a coincidence, but perhaps a sign of the times – two other authoritative intellectuals born in Eastern Europe at the time of communism: Zygmunt Bauman, a sociologist born in Poland and then relocated in the United Kingdom, and Predrag Matvejevic, of a Russian father and a Croatian mother, who was born in Mostar, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and lived later in Italy for a long time, an extraordinary “poet of the Mediterranean”, which he regarded as a place of dialogue and civilization.
Todorov, like Bauman and Matvejevic, was the personification, the living witness of a possible and desirable Europe. The Europe of a plurality of identities, belongings and citizenships, the Europe of dialogue between cultures, the Europe of the encounter and integration between peoples and states, capable of thinking of and practicing “Unity in Diversity”, as the European Union's motto says.
In times like these, marked in Europe and elsewhere by the re-emergence in the new context of globalization of ideological and xenophobic ideologies and movements inspired by pathological forms of hypertrophied identity, their human and cultural heritage is decisive for our present and for our future. Todorov, in particular, developed over time fundamental reflections on the “relational” and “built up” character of identity, starting from a work of the Eighties on the theme of America's conquest by the Europeans (La conquête de l’Amérique, La question de l’autre, Paris, Robert Laffont, 1982), an event that, as well known, has taken on a great symbolic value in Western culture. As each of us can easily experience, the perception of one's own identity passes through its being perceived by others, through the gaze they throw upon us. Inevitably, we get to know each other, and we only know through relation and juxtaposition. Distance and difference are therefore the conditions of the possibility to know ourselves and the world around us. The theme of diversity, the reflection on the relationship between “us” and “the others” are present throughout Todorov’s entire life and intellectual production. “We and the Others” is not by chance the title of a work published in 1989 (Nous et les autres. La réflexion française sur la diversité humaine, Editions du Seuil, Paris), in which there is, among other things, a specific analysis on the theme of the nation and of nationalism. The nation, for Todorov as well as for the federalist culture, is a construction, “it is not a group of spontaneous formation …” and above all, unlike the family, “it is not a true school of solidarity ... nor an easy transition toward the respect of humanity in all its forms. That is why history abounds with examples in which family devotion goes side by side with tolerance towards a foreigner, while nationalism never leads to anything universal”. In essence, the nation and humanity, or the universal in Todorov’s language, constitute an unresolved antinomy, with no reconciliation possible. It should be noted that, in this case, the federalist culture offers instead another possible vision, through the prospect of a multilevel statehood in which nation and the world are two different levels, connected and co-ordinated, of the same political system. In this perspective, the national belonging, no longer exclusive and excluding, can coexist with the “universal” one, just like several levels of citizenship can coexist together.
Civilized people and barbarians, once again us and the others, is another fundamental antinomy that Todorov observes and analyzes. In the ethnocentric viewpoint, which often prevails in human history and of which nationalism in modern times is the most significant expression, we, those born by pure chance on this side of the river, to paraphrase a famous Pascal’s reflection (Pensées, no. 293), are the civilized ones; the others, those born, similarly by pure chance, on the other side of the same river, are the barbarians.
But, actually, who are really the barbarians? – Todorov asks himself resuming the old question posed by Michel de Montaigne. “Barbarians – he observes – are those who deny the full humanity of the others. This does not mean that they ignore or neglect their human nature, but that they behave as if the others were not human, or not completely so”. How can we then eradicate barbarism from the world? Only through the mutual recognition of our own common and constitutive humanity, beyond and against the “clash of civilization” that is threatening the world. And it is obvious to all how far there is still to go in that direction today. In a paper published in France in 2008 on the crisis of European democracy (La peur des barbares, Au de là du choc des civilizations, Paris, Robert Laffont), Todorov notes how instead of the political-cultural divisions typical of the twentieth century, East and West, North and South, is taking shape today, in the era of ungoverned globalization, a great fracture between areas of the world dominated by fear and areas dominated by resentment. Fear and resentment are, to some extent, collective emotions bound to produce the negation of the humanity of others, increasingly legitimated and fueled by opportunistic and, in fact, criminogenic leaderships. “Our demons – the writer observes – push us to look like our adversary in order to fight him better. But terrorizing terrorists means becoming like them”. In the same direction, in another work of his, Todorov also writes, following a line of thought that goes from Montesquieu to Camus: “Noble ends never justify vile means ... the means used can obliterate the purpose pursued”. It must also be pointed out, in the footsteps of Todorov himself, that we are in reality facing today not so much a “clash of civilizations” as one “within civilizations”. Suffice to think of the deep divisions that are crossing all the societies and countries of Muslim civilization – too often we forget that the first enemies and the first victims of Islamist terrorists are other Muslims – and, on the other hand, the social and cultural fractures that are troubling our Western societies too. Fear and resentment cut across all societies, they are not limited to the borders between different states and peoples.
A new world disorder, as Todorov points out in a work published in 2003 (Le nouveau désordre mondial. Réflections d'un Européen, Robert Laffont, Paris), characterizes the epoch following the terrorist attacks of September 2001, during which “the clash of civilizations” and “within civilizations” mentioned above imposed themselves on the world scene. The West, and Europe in particular, now have a new internal enemy, the American “neocons”, supporters of “preemptive wars”, such as the terribly disastrous one in Iraq, and of the strategy, this too unsuccessful, of exporting democracy through armed conflicts. Against the US model of military power Todorov proposes the model of “soft power” represented by Europe, based on the willingness to self-limit one’s power through law, and on the practice of international cooperation and agreements. This does not mean, according to the author, that the European Union should not avail itself of a common military force, which is indeed necessary, but that it must have specific and limited aims: defending the territory of the Union, preventing possible conflicts in Europe, possessing a deterrence capacity, being able to intervene outside Europe at the request of friendly governments, or preventing a genocide in progress.
The new global disorder is accompanied by the crisis of representative democracy, in Europe and elsewhere. In the “Altiero Spinelli Lecture” given in May 2005 at the Center for Studies on Federalism in Turin (Italy), Todorov, who was speaking only two days after the French referendum which rejected the European Constitution (interpreted as a victory of populism and resentment over democracy), identifies three essential factors for the crisis of this model, all attributable to the prevalence of some individuals, just a few and lacking democratic legitimacy, over a whole community: the personal demagogic leaderships supported by the new mass-communication media; the economic and financial power of a “global economy that escapes by now the political control of states”; and, finally, terrorism, which has taken away from the States even their last fundamental resource, that is, in Max Weber’s language, “the monopoly of the legitimate use of force”. From such a situation the necessity ensues, according to Todorov, to “strengthen the collective concerns, i.e. those of the states and of groups of states”, with the stipulation that “what is to be limited is not the freedom of individuals, but their power”. It is, in essence, the acknowledgment of the decisive importance of the institutional, legal and statutory dimension to men's lives, in accordance also with a characteristic postulate of the federalist culture, to which however Todorov did not belong. “There is something worse than a bad state, and that is the absence of any form of state”: in a world of failed states such as the present (think of the Middle East and its catastrophes), this opinion of his seems to be particularly significant today.
Europe, to conclude. In an interview from 2008, Todorov said on this topic: “The sense of European citizenship remains very strong in me: I am proud of the tradition of this continent and I am proud of belonging to an entity that makes of plurality and complexity its most salient characteristics ... Europe also has in its history, obviously, many painful pages and many obscure sides, but I still believe that it is possible to draw up a positive model from its history, and it is in this model that I project and identify my own person”. Todorov recognized, as we have seen, the importance of common institutions, of a State sovereignty shared by all Europeans. However, this was not, due also to the specific aspects of his background as a semiologist and philosopher of communication, the “focus” of his intellectual work, which was instead addressed to the anthropological and cultural aspects of the construction process of the European unity. Culture, Todorov notes, must become “the third pillar of European construction, alongside the economy and the legal and political institutions. Hopefully, you will then find in it a supplement of soul, a spiritual and affective dimension, absent elsewhere”. And also: “A political idea enhances its effectiveness if it is brought not only from common interests but also from shared passions …”. It is precisely these passions that today, in difficult times, should be found again and energized, in trying to build a new “warm” narrative on Europe, that cannot be perceived only as a market and as a currency. Todorov’s legacy, and also those of Bauman and Matvejevic evoked at the beginning of this article, can to some extent help us to do so.
Translated by Lionello Casalegno
Log in