Seizing Europe : crisis management, constitutional transformations, constituent movements

It is safe to contend that the shattering of old spatial hierarchies and the emergence of new geographies of capitalist development and accumulation figure prominently among the tendencies underlying the global economic crisis (Mezzadra & Neilson 20 13a). New regionalisms and new patterns of multilateralism are taking shape and, although no new world order is clearly discernible, the present disorder already bears the traces of a decline of Western hegemony. No "civilizational" emphasis, of course, behind this statement-but I am convinced that there is a need to take stock of the meaning and relevance of the new global geographies in the making to better understand the specific challenges, risks, and opportunities we are currently confronted with in Europe. A process of "provincialization" of Europe, to put it as in the title of an impm1ant book by Dipesh Chakrabarty (2000), is actually underway, but the direction of this process, its political interpretation, is still open. The crisis of sovereign debt, the specific and most visible way in which the global economic crisis hit Europe, has nevertheless created a profoundly new situation in the European Union (EU). A section of the European elite and capital is attempting-indeed quite successfully to date-to exploit the crisis as a chance to "reform" the institutional architecture of the EU, to foster a new compromise between financial capital and export-oriented industry, and to establish new center-periphery relations. The proposal by Hans-Peter Keitel, President of the Federation of German Industry, to turn Greece into a special economic zone is a good reminder of the importance of the last point (see German Industry Leader 2012), while the continuity of "austerity," with its disruptive social effects, is the general hallmark of the project and the best illustration of its ferocious class nature. In this essay 1 highlight some aspects of this new situation in Europe, focusing on the resulting consequences for such important political and legal concepts as citizenship and constitution. It is important to keep in mind that these concepts have been part and parcel of European history and even "identity" for centuries. Their contemporary transformations therefore provide an effective angle on the stakes of the current crisis in Europe. Highlighting the shifting configurations of power within the material constitution of the EU compels us to go beyond any rhetoric of "democratic deficit" and to posit democracy and citizenship themselves as concepts and practices that need to be radically reinvented in Europe. In other words, it leads us to contend that there is a need to imagine a constituent movement and moment in Europe. It is only within such a movement and moment that we can think of a left capable of politically expressing the claims and needs of the composition of contemporary living labor-and at the same time realistically interpret the challenge of the provincialization of Europe as a chance for a new project of freedom and equality.