The Europeanization of Cinema: Interzones and Imaginative Communities

5. "Outside" Europe

Chapter 5 “Outside” Europe The last chapter considered the EU’s border as mobile; its exterior can never be fixed or made permanent. Where would European culture find its limits? Does European culture end at the Urals? Or does it spread further to fill out the bordersofRussia?HasAlgeria,onceadepartmentofFrance,remainedpartof theFrancophoneworldyetlostitsrelationshiptoEuropeanculture?Whenthe Portuguese or the British describe trips to Europe, is their journey further than the voyage to or from Surinam, French Guiana, or the Cayman Islands? Which part of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Latin America, the subcontinent, Africa, and Asia have not been directly impacted by European culture?Howmanycountriesspreadacrosscontinentsunderstandthemselves as part of European culture? The last chapter also already made the point that theperipheryalwayshastheabilitytopasstheborderandarriveinside.Clearly if it is a question of culture, the border of Europe can always expand. This is a mobile and a permeable border. This chapter explores how the European funding of the cinematic apparatus hasthepotentialtofunctionmuchasgeographicbordersdo,essentializingeven abjectingcertainspacesexteriortoEuropeanvalues.Inthischapter,weturnour attentiontothe“outside”ofEuropeandexplorehowtheEuropeanmodeofproductionoutsideofEuroperunstheriskofinstitutingacycleofOrientalism ,offering European (and American) audiences tales they want to hear, actually keeping as distant strangers people who live around the corner or down the hall.1 130 • Chapter 5 Brussels’s Mediterranean Shores In 1995 a new orientation began in the EU toward a closer regional tie with neighboringcountries.EspeciallytheMediterraneanregioncameundercloser scrutiny and in the context of the “Barcelona Process,” the EU established the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EUROMED) with the goals of “restoring” a coherency to the entire Mediterranean region that it has had reaching back into classical antiquity. Inthisperspective,thereistherecognitionthattheterritoryhasbeenhistorically a region of interaction and trade, fostered by ease of transportation over the sea and a history of grand empires that lined and united the shores. This state of commonality was understood as a kind of basic normalcy and that the currentdivisionbetweenunitedEuropeintheNorthandthevariousregionsto theSouthandEastarenotnatural.Theinitiativethussoughttocreateaformof interzonebetweentheEUasacoherentbodyandthoseneighboringcountries, a common territory of hospitality and privileged partnership. In the positive goals of the initiative was also a sense of solidifying the European sphere of influence in a way that was distinct from NATO and even as a free-trade zone counterbalance to the North American Free Trade Agreement signed just the year before in 1994. ThegoalsoftheBarcelonaprocessandtheEUROMEDpartnershipwerethus threefold. First, it was to foster economic development through free-market trade. To this end, the region was promised access to the EU market through the creation of a free-trade zone, not unlike NAFTA across the Atlantic. Second , the establishment of a common security orientation aimed at bringing peace and stability to the region. To this end, a Charta for Peace and Stability wasdevelopedthatproposedregularmeetingsandconflictmanagementcodes thatwoulddiffuseinternationaltensions.Third,afurthergoalwasestablished to foster cultural and social contact and cooperation. IfweunderstandtheEUROMEDprogramasaimingtoestablishanewtransnationalzone ,theproblem,ofcourse,isthatthedevelopmentofsuchgoalswas not among equal partners. Rather, on the one side is a set of states that formed a relatively unified negotiating body. Many of these states do not share a geographicborderwiththeMediterranean ;nevertheless,mostofthemhavesome formofneocolonialpresenceontheothersideoftheMediterranean.Andonthe other side, a set of states is divided into conflicted national interests. Many of themhaveauthoritarianpoliticalstructures,arewrackedbypoverty,andserve as sending states to Europe in patterns of labor migration and asylum. Even if we understand the regional aspirations of the EU expressed in EUROMED as “Outside” Europe • 131 benevolent and truly neighborly in their orientation, these imbalances would lead to an unequal negotiating status and an uneven form of development. After initial successes, the results of these initiatives became mixed. Many EUROMEDmembersrespondedtothepartnershipwiththeEUbyparticipating in economic liberalization but not political. The countries in the region followed the Chinese model of allowing for free-market economics coupled with a significant degree of political repression: authoritarian force keeps economically displacedworkersandfarmersincheckandregionalelitesinpower.Thisshift towardrepressioncombinedwiththefailureoftheOsloPeaceInitiativeandthe outbreak of the Iraq War actually resulted in an escalation of tension with the European North, and the developments after the Arab Spring only intensified tensionfurther.Perhaps,however,mostproblematicforregionalpeaceandsecurityhasbeenthecontraveninghardeningofmigrationpolicies .Theeconomic displacement brought by free trade led to an ongoing wave of migration to the North to which the EU responded by unilateral attempts to seal the borders. By 2005, the Euro-Mediterranean partnership had arrived at an impasse, with more attention devoted within the EU to the eastern expansion of the borders of the EU than to the relations to the South and the Islamic world as such. It is important to focus here on the goal of common culture and cooperation , because, out of the three goals, it at first seemed to be the least likely but ultimately has proven to be the most successful and long-lasting aspect of the initiative. Central to this goal was the now famous Thessaloniki Conference in 1997, which...