Seyla Benhabib on Rights and the Borders of Belonging

UTBILDNING & DEMOKRATI 2006, VOL 15, NR 1, 109–118 TEMA: PEDAGOGISK FILOSOFI, ETIK OCH POLITIK

RECENSIONSESSÄ “Like travellers navigating an unknown terrain”: Seyla Benhabib on rights and the borders of belonging

Across many disciplines, including light of the challenges brought on by education, a certain love–hate relation increasingly multicultural, multieth- has developed with globalization, nic, and multinational societies. With swinging between hopeful exuberance such cultural pluralism, nation-states and tragic lamentation, with many in particular can no longer easily hold perspectives precariously balanced on to a unified identity based around between the two. The particular con- a common ethnicity. Moreover, anal- tours of this relation have, of course, yses of the current transformation of taken shape quite differently accord- nation-states have also occurred in ing to the specific issues arising out of light of globalizing influences, such as the various disciplines, and have cov- the development of regional forms of ered myriad issues such as the delete- governance (e.g., the European Union), rious effects of global capital, the the international human rights regime threats facing the natural environment, (e.g., various UN treaties and the Eu- the opportunities afforded by informa- ropean Court of Human Rights), and tion technology, the breaking up of the trans-national institutions (e.g., the nation-state, and the hybridization of WTO and IMF). Thus the complexity culture and identity, to name but a few. of articulating a cohesive set of ques- Not merely an academic matter, how- tions that brings to the fore both the ever, this focus on globalization has changing internal characteristics of flourished in the context of current states and the growing external pres- social movements and political poli- sures of globalization they face is cies that attempt to grapple with the daunting. The conditions and effects broad range of conditions that mark of globalization are elusive and their civil life within and across borders. geography is by no means clear. As Within political theory, there is a Seyla Benhabib (2004) notes, in try- growing concern with how to define ing to chart the as-yet-emerging polit- formations of political community in ical forms of globalization with old maps “we are like travellers navigating an unknown terrain” (p. 6). Benhabib, Seyla (2004): The Rights of Our conventional ways of under- Others: Aliens, Residents and Citizens. standing nation, citizenship, and com- Cambridge: Cambridge University munity currently seem inadequate to Press. SHARON TODD

the task of explaining the conditions of of civil belonging: how does one pre- contemporary civil, social and eco- vent the growing feeling of disenfran- nomic life – they are old maps indeed. chisement among those who do not fit Why is this so? It is certainly not be- the “homogeneous” image of the na- cause cultural and ethnic diversity is a tion, the violent manifestations of new element in the body politic, nor which we witnessed most recently are great periods of migration entirely across France? Responses to such di- novel; and neither has trans-national lemmas of citizenship within the politics emerged only in the past quar- changing features of the nation-state ter century. Rather the newness of the system have relied particularly on two problem emerges, it seems to me, as old ideas. First, has been the problem- the old fictions of homogeneity upon atic return to the traditional image of which nations have been built have homogeneity – whether conceived of begun to unravel at the seams. That is, as a “people,” or an ethnic national part of the West’s “social imaginary of identity – as a way of buttressing the modernity” no longer appears to offer commonality that has united the po- stability to states. According to Charles litical community in the past and that Taylor (2004) social imaginaries are has facilitated, to a large degree, the not simply ideologies that falsely im- nation’s capacity to determine itself. agine reality, but “they also have a Even though this myth might have constitutive function, that of making been constitutive of a sense of national possible the practices that they make belonging, it no longer offers the sta- sense of and thus enable” (p. 183). In bility it perhaps once did; social forces other words, they are inevitable fictions larger than national narratives of unity that all societies cannot live without. simply make this claim impossible to Currently, however, those social and justify in a world where the question political practices once sustained by of membership within states is on the the imaginary of homogeneity have table precisely because these imaginar- actually altered quite considerably. For ies no longer hold. A second response, example, migration has had a tremen- one less troublesome in my view, but dous impact on how nation-states who still not wholly without its problems, previously saw themselves as cultural- has been the turn to cosmopolitanism, ly uniform (in spite of evidence to the which encapsulates the push for more contrary) are actually challenging that expansive notions of belonging in a imaginary through growing participa- world where borders are becoming tion in the public sphere. What politi- increasingly blurred – both because of cal philosophers are at pains to map is the vast increase in migration and also the nascent formation of these new prac- because states are far less independ- tices through a different imaginary lens. ent entities than they were, through free Such lenses, however, are not so trade, political federations, interna- easy to construct, and often old ideas tional law, and human rights treaties. are mobilized and refashioned in the Also an old idea, current uses of cosmo- service of opening up new possibili- politanism nevertheless stake out a very ties. One of the major challenges for different imaginary: citizenship based political theory has to do with issues on an attachment and belonging to a

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pluralist world. Yet, the issue for cos- standing of deliberative democracy as mopolitanism, as we shall see, is how a dialogic engagement – an aspect of to reconcile its attachments to global her work that I critically discuss be- “universals,” such as human rights, with low in relation to her more recent text its commitment to respect and value the – she focused on the democratic chal- “particulars” represented through diverse lenge to mediate between different cultures and individuals.1 forms of cultural meaning. In terms of It is precisely this terrain navi- her capacity to navigate boldly gated by Seyla Benhabib (2004) in The through debates which have become Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents and so polarized, she displays the same Citizens. Here is an attempt to offer a tenaciousness in her newest book. In- new political imaginary that, in my deed, her final chapters on citizenship reading, takes issue with homogeneity, and the post-national European scene on the one hand, and grapples with in The Claims of Culture are really the dual attachments of a cosmopoli- the departure points for The Rights of tan outlook, on the other. Originally Others, so readers familiar with the delivered as part of the Seeley Lecture former will recognize the similarity of Series at the University of Cambridge, themes and argumentative strategies The Rights of Others represents an in the latter. extension of some of her thinking in In this most recent text, Benhabib her earlier work, The Claims of Cul- (2004) addresses herself to the condi- ture (2002). There Benhabib took on tions of political community: how peo- the challenges faced by liberal democ- ple come to belong and achieve polit- racies in light of cultural conflict and ical membership in the context of the what this means for cultural rights, current upheavals of the nation-state gender, and citizenship. Not content system and the vast migration and re- with viewing cultures as homogene- settlement that is one of the hallmarks ous wholes, Benhabib moved beyond of the global era. As the title suggests, the rather stagnant debates between she is concerned with the rights of those multiculturalists and certain demo- who have been “othered” through the cratic theorists. She resisted falling boundaries that states create, bounda- into a trite dichotomy that positions ries which draw distinctions between any concern with culture as hopelessly those who fully belong and those relativistic, on the one hand, and that whose belonging is much more tenu- views all universalism as being either ous. Conferring citizenship (or not) sig- entirely ethnocentric or absolutist, on nifies who is “us” and who is “other” the other. Instead, through her under- within set territorial borders. Moreo- ver it inscribes who has access to social and civil benefits and who is protected under which rights. Benhabib 1. I have elsewhere described the tensions observes that at certain historical junc- within cosmopolitanism in terms of tures the difficulties of political bound- ambiguity, tracing it from Kant’s famous formulation of cosmopolitanism aries become more visible than at oth- in his essay “Perpetual peace.” See Todd ers – and this is one such time (Ben- (forthcoming). habib 2004, p. 18). Insightfully, Ben-

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habib does not begin with seeing mi- In situating her response, she locates gration and the fraying of the powers the boundaries of political membership of the nation-state merely as “prob- within a dual context: First is that of lems,” rather she poses them as op- the state’s right to determine who and portunities for rethinking issues of cit- under what conditions citizenship can izenship and global justice. be held, as well as defining which po- Migration, for Benhabib, is a key litical and civil rights that those who element for understanding political are not full citizens are entitled to. membership; for the difficulties faced Those seeking asylum, for instance, by migrants put into sharp relief the rarely have any access to political conditions and meanings of citizenship forms of participation and their rights in general. With the ever-expanding are severely curtailed, whereas some numbers of refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants who are granted perma- and immigrants in countries around the nent residence might enjoy limited globe (not only in the West), the time benefits.2 Thus within liberal democ- seems especially ripe to investigate the racies, the lines of membership remain ways in which states determine mem- to a large degree nationally deter- bership, how people in foreign lands mined. However, this is complicated come to belong, and, most importantly, somewhat by the second context: the the conditions under which just prac- trans-national one. This is, in effect, a tices of membership might develop. deterritorialized context, one with no Thus her book is responding to what I geographic borders yet one that im- see are urgent questions that states need plicates nations in the regime of inter- to consider in developing policies that national human rights through vari- take seriously the pluralistic contexts ous declarations, treaties, covenants, they govern. And, of course, if one is and laws that afford protection to in- talking about a state as a democracy, dividuals against state power. Thus the then the people who are governed ought issue for liberal democracies, in Ben- ideally to be the same as those doing habib’s view, is how they can deal with the governing. In this sense the ques- the conflict between exercising their tion of who can participate and under sovereignty in defining the terms un- what conditions gets at the heart of the der which persons will be considered democratic project. as members, on the one hand, and Benhabib frames the tasks of her upholding the idea that all human be- book in terms of two questions: ings should enjoy the same right to be members of a democratic polity, on What should be guiding norma- the other. She suggests that we see the tive principles of membership in complex negotiation between “con- a world of increasingly deterritorialized politics? Which practices and principles of civil and political incorporation are most com- 2. Benhabib (2004) has assembled compatible with the philosophical parative information on rights and self-understanding and constitu- benefits available to residents with va- tional commitments of liberal de- rying status within EU countries. See mocracies? (p. 12) pp. 157–161.

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text-transcending” rights claims and aspiration and in no way descriptive democratic life in terms of “democratic of democratic societies. iterations” (pp. 176–183). Drawing on Derrida’s notion of iteration for inspi- [Instead,] the unity of the demos ration, Benhabib sees that with every ought to be understood not as if articulation, meaning is transformed, it were a harmonious given, but added on to, and enriched: there is no rather as a process of self-constitution, through more or less con- original meaning to which all itera- scious struggles of inclusion and tions must conform (p. 179). Through exclusion (p. 216). “public argument, deliberation, and exchange” in both democratic institu- In this sense, I interpret her here as tions (legal and political) and civil trying to move beyond the imaginary society (the media, various associa- homogeneity that has largely support- tions) rights are contested, championed ed national political projects, even and repealed. Democratic iteration democratic ones. However, her criti- allows Benhabib to keep the political cisms do not lead her to embrace a conversation open to pluralism, see- full-blown cosmopolitanism that ing every robust democracy as embod- would dismiss the centrality of the state ying a diversity central to the func- in making decisions about political tioning of that democracy (a point that membership in favour of diffuse (and I think gets lost at times in the book, some would say meaningless [Bauman as I discuss below). 1999]) notions of global citizenship. Viewing the demos, the political Viewing the state as central to the community, as separate from the eth- flourishing of democracy which can nos, the collective cultural identity, ensure the political participation of Benhabib is thus deeply suspicious of individuals at a more local level, she attempts to resurrect the narrative of is firmly entrenched in the idea that national unity or a Rawlsian notion states still need to have a strong say of “the people” as a way of simplify- as to how they grant citizenship rights ing citizenship issues (indeed she de- to individuals within their borders. votes a significant amount of space to Nonetheless she is committed to a cos- debunking John Rawls’s project and mopolitan outlook in the sense of pro- other liberal positions; see Chapter 3). viding an overarching framework of Her charge is that “the people,” as it is rights to which states must be held invoked in Rawls’s (1999) famous accountable in pursuing their laws and work, The Law of Peoples, fails to take regulations regarding political mem- into account the pluralism that inheres bership. Her navigation points, then, in any political body. For Benhabib, are positioned between the sovereignty democracies are not holistic societies; of the state and international human “collective identities are formed by rights, and she charts her response to strands of competing and contentious her initial questions between them, narratives” (p. 82–83). Thus “we the through the idea of a cosmopolitan people” – at least as a democratic call federalism. for self-rule and not as a signifier for a Benhabib’s version of cosmopoli- uniform identity – is merely always an tan federalism largely grows out of

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Immanuel Kant’s view of cosmopoli- provide a hospitable environment to tanism as expressed in his 1795 essay, the stranger. What his work does “Perpetual peace.” Her reading of Kant emphasize, though, is that the best way is an astute rendering of the signifi- for countries to ensure peace between cance that the right for all to be granted themselves is to form republican con- hospitality on foreign soil has for the stitutions that adhere to the principle contemporary world. Kant’s third ar- of cosmopolitan right. As Benhabib ticle for perpetual peace reads: “Cos- shows quite clearly, Kant articulates mopolitan right shall be limited to con- for the first time a “liberal understand- ditions of universal hospitality;” Kant ing of sovereignty” (p. 42) whereby is careful to explicate that with respect the internal constitutions of states are to hospitality we are “concerned not subject to international requirement. with philanthropy but with right” (Kant This is key to Benhabib’s entire 1795/1991, p. 105). Benhabib quite development of cosmopolitan federal- rightly makes much of this third article ism as a response to the issues of mem- and of the fact that Kant proposes that bership. The major difference with the right to hospitality is a right of Kant is that she rereads the sovereignty humanity – one that all possess by vir- of states as being morally bound to tue of being human. Kant establishes extend full membership to all residents a metaphysical justification for this (p. 42). To make her case she must a) right to hospitality. But this right is a establish that membership rights are long way off from being applied to the universal rights; and b) clarify how question of granting full membership democracies are to go about fulfilling to the foreigner. For Kant, the hospi- this universal task without abrogating tality afforded to the stranger as a vis- their self-rule, what she refers to as the itor does not automatically translate “paradox of democratic legitimacy.” into granting permanent residency: Benhabib explores Hannah Arendt’s “He [the stranger] may only claim work in order to refine her views on the right of resort” (p. 106). One of the relation between membership rights and limits, then, as Benhabib understands human rights. In Origins of Totalitari- it is that hospitality concerns relations anism, Arendt grapples with the diffi- between individuals who already “be- culties of stateless persons and draws the long to different civic entities yet who conclusion that all people have the “right encounter one another at the margins to have rights.” It is worth quoting the of bounded communities” and does original from which Benhabib draws her not refer to those who occupy the same analysis: civic entity (Benhabib 2004, p.27). Thus the stranger is already a citizen We become aware of the existence elsewhere. Moreover, Kant claims that of a right to have rights … and a it is only through the beneficence of right to belong to some kind of the state that full rights of belonging organized community, only when millions of people emerge who are to be granted to the stranger. In had lost and could not regain other words the state is neither legally these rights because of the new nor morally bound to confer such be- global political situation … the longing – it is only morally bound to right to have rights, or the right of

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every individual to belong to hu- order to circumvent the problems she manity, should be guaranteed by sees in their positions. In putting forth a humanity itself. It is by no means cosmopolitan federalism, she is attempt- certain whether this is possible. ing to secure a moral reason for states (quoted in Benhabib 2004, p. 55) to confer full membership to those who reside within their borders, without sac- Benhabib’s gloss on the phrase, “the rificing the democratic ability of a po- right to have rights,” is particularly litical community to define for itself incisive in laying bare the two differ- what it thinks best. The rights of others ent aspects of rights implied here. Ben- in this view must always occur within habib reads the first use of the term right the paradox of democratic legitimacy – as “a moral claim to membership and that is, the irresolvable conflict that a certain form of treatment compatible arises when the sovereign of democ- with the claim to membership” (p. 56). racy (“we, the people”) is legitimated The second use refers to the rights al- by an act of constitution that itself con- ready possessed by a member of a po- forms to universal human rights. Her litical community. Although the moral attempt to universalize membership claim to be recognized as a rights- rights lies in her proposal of a discur- bearing person is universal (that is, it sive ethical position: transcends all borders), Benhabib points out that in Arendt’s case this was not I can justify to you with good due to some metaphysical properties of grounds that you and I should re- humanity (contra Kant). Arendt instead spect each others’ reciprocal claims offers a political solution to recogni- to act in certain ways and not to tion: it is only through political com- act in others, and to enjoy certain munity where the right to have rights resources and services (p. 130). might be realized (p. 59). Indeed, in the last sentence of the quote above, Arendt Here is where the universality of respect doubts that humanity itself can secure appears alongside egalitarian reciproc- the recognition required to be entitled ity as the metanorms that guide discur- to rights. At the end of the day, Ben- sive practice in democracies (p. 13). habib sees Arendt’s reliance upon polit- What she reveals here, though, is an ical community as just as dissatisfying unjustified appeal to these universal as Kant’s failure to extend hospitality norms via discourse ethics that then to include full membership, for it relies serves as the justification for her claim on the “historical arbitrariness of re- that membership rights are universal. publican acts of founding whose ark of This position, however, fails to appre- equality will always include some and ciate fully and bring to logical con- exclude others” (p. 66). clusion her otherwise compelling ar- While her reading of both Kant and gument in favour of the rights of oth- Arendt critically appropriates the key ers and the notion of democratic iter- terms of “right of humanity” and the ation that, in my view, better support “right to have rights,” Benhabib attempts her cosmopolitan federalism. a “postmetaphysical justification of the Admitting that objections have principle of right” (esp. pp. 131–134) in been raised with respect to the petitio

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principii of discourse ethics, she none- democratic iterations. This seems to theless defends her position in terms of me inadequate for addressing the the right to justification. complexity of membership issues, especially when all norms get subsumed Your freedom can be restricted under discourse ethics: only through reciprocally and generally justifiable norms which norms whose origins may lie out- equally apply to all (p. 133). side discursive processes ought to be discursively justifiable, when and So now what we have is a translation if called into question (p. 133). of human right into discursive right. The postmetaphysical justification of The moral universalism she is bound rights discourse turns out to be the to through her version of Haberma- right to justification itself. My prob- sian discourse ethics (e.g., with respect lem with this is not only the circularity to reciprocity) reduces communication of the argument – one has to accept with the other to a rational mode of the justificatory universal metanorms justification to which both parties must of respect and egalitarian reciprocity subject themselves. In my view, the without justification; the principle of danger she faces is that if we place right is thereby turned into an unjusti- too much emphasis on moral univer- fiable principle of justification – but salism both for human rights and in has to do with the fact that I think the terms of the communicative grounds other has been forgotten in her appeal of democracy, there is a diminishment to freedom as a reciprocal grounding of the political in terms of the inevita- of rights, and as a result the specifi- ble struggle over how to make abstract cally political aspect of her work is principles meaningful in specific civic undermined. That is, while she asks contexts (whether we are speaking of the right – and demanding – questions how membership rights are made of political belonging, and insists that meaningful, or of the very meaning of the “others” who are the products of respect and egalitarian reciprocity that liberal democratic political boundaries inform communication for Benhabib). need to be heard and attain some But, even more importantly in my measure of democratic participation, view, there is a diminishment in un- she fails fully to radicalize this idea. derstanding what communication with By not pushing the envelope further, the other entails – particularly those she takes much of the political edge others, such as refugees and asylees, off the struggles over belonging. I do who have limited room to speak – and not buy the argument – particularly to be listened to. as it is here used as a justification – Not that rules for communication that convincing the other of “the va- are systematically unimportant, but it lidity of norms” with good reasons seems to me that not only does politi- constitutes the basis for a vibrant po- cal discourse suffer if it becomes pro- litical discussion, particularly when it grammatic, it also fails to consider that is precisely these norms that are polit- communication with another human icized – that is, concretized through being is not simply procedural, nor can

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it always be about reciprocity and only desirable means for our ability mutuality. My relation to another’s to listen to others. Indeed, Iris Marion discourse is necessarily asymmetrical Young (2000), drawing on Levinas, has because it is the other who speaks; proposed that the moment of greeting what she says can never totally cap- is a moment of public acknowledge- ture her otherness, and neither can my ment, where response to the speaker understanding of her speech. Engag- is much less about rules and more ing in discourse, then, is a response about the recognition of difference (pp. not only to the words she speaks (the 57–59). How might, then, communi- said) but to the difference she reveals cation itself be understood in terms of (the saying). It is here that Emmanuel its plurality? It seems to me that this Levinas, for instance, has located the would require resisting the tendency of emergence of responsibility as a re- discourse ethics to subsume participants sponse to the other. Thus, even in our into regimes of universalism that al- striving for understanding and mutu- ready delineate the ground of meaning; ality we risk undermining the very it also invites us to see discourse as it- difference that makes dialogue inevi- self a revelation of difference through table in the first place. As Robert Gibbs which meaning is created and re-created (2000) has commented on his own – which is, after all, a key element in a reading of Levinasian responsibility to robust political sphere. I think Benhab- the other in relation to Habermasian ib actually contributes to this radicali- discourse ethics: ty through her notion of democratic iteration (which indeed is very much Were the sequence of our presenta- about difference), but seems to back off tion to become a simple narrative, from its full implications. Through it- that is, first we must respond, and eration, we can see the other as partici- then subsequently we learn to con- pating in various discursive strategies, verse, to take turns and exchange interpretations, reasoning toward all of which do not fall under the re- a consensus; then we would mis- gime of universalism embodied in dis- understand the ways signs work. course ethics. Indeed, I think if we heed All use of signs involves both func- Derrida’s (2002) call for politics to tions, both asymmetrical respon- work the contradictory spaces of hos- sibility and a goal of mutuality that pitality, democratic iteration is crucial, can never leave behind the asym- for it compels us to examine the impli- metry (p. 146). cations of our iterations in relation to what meaning – and value – we are What I would like to suggest is that granting to rights; and what meaning returning to the other as the fulcrum and value we are granting to the other for Benhabib’s argument on the com- to have such rights. In fact, I see this as municative aspects of democracy Benhabib’s main challenge. And in would radicalize the potential for dem- terms of education specifically, her fo- ocratic practices to take alternative cus on both democratic iteration and forms, ones that would truly take issue the other as central to cosmopolitan with the impossible task of seeking federalism leads to a number of ques- universal rules of justification as the tions that I think capture the global di-

117 SHARON TODD lemmas of education: How does educa- References tion participate in the drawing of boundaries of political community through Bauman, Zygmunt (1999): In Search citizenship education? How might ed- of Politics. Stanford: Stanford ucation participate in the creation of a University Press. hospitable ethos in which the question Benhabib, Seyla (2004): The Rights of rights is less about self entitlement of Others: Aliens, Residents and and more about securing the rights of Citizens. Cambridge: Cambridge others through political struggle? How University Press. might the debates in and about educa- Benhabib, Seyla (2002): The Claims tion be seen in terms of democratic it- of Culture: Equality and Diversity erations, that is as sites of lively politi- in the Global Era. Princeton: cal struggle that wrestle with meaning? Princeton University Press. What responses to these questions re- Derrida, Jacques (2002): On Cosmo- quire, first and foremost, is a commit- politanism and Forgiveness. ment to travelling into uncharted ter- London: Routledge. rain knowing that our navigation Gibbs, Robert (2000): Why Ethics? points will never get us exactly where Signs of Responsibilities. Princeton: we want to be. Princeton University Press. Kant, Immanuel (1795/1991): Perpetual Sharon Todd peace. In Hans Reiss, ed: Political Writings, pp. 93–130. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taylor, Charles (2004): Modern Social Imaginaries. Durham: Sharon Todd är docent i pedagogik Duke University Press. vid Institutionen för Samhälle, kultur Todd, Sharon (forthcoming): och lärande, Lärarhögskolan i Stock- Ambiguities of cosmopolitanism: holm, Box 34103, 100 26 Stockholm. E-post: [email protected] difference, gender and the right to education. In Klas Roth & Ilan Gur Zeév, eds: Critical Issues in Education in a Global World. Springer Publishing. Young, Iris Marion (2000): Inclusion and Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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