Universality, spectrality, proximity: The cinematic faces of Europe's other

Abstract

Abstract For a number of scholars, the crisis of European identity is a result of the asymmetry between Europe's universal normative claims and its particular ethnic, cultural and racial contexts. This asymmetry is epitomized by the EU's failure to ratify its legally binding constitution. For others, the same asymmetry constitutes the very condition of being a European. Those envision Europeanness beyond its regulative idea as the ethical injunction of a promise to 'the other'. This article probes the validity of each of these arguments by juxtaposing two groups of films. Gianfraco Rosi's Fire at Sea (2016) and Ai Weiwei's Human Flow (2017) remain committed to the idea of human rights as a universal norm, an idea whose most prominent advocate is Jürgen Habermas. As an alternative to this view, Guido Hendrikx's Stranger in Paradise (2016) and Christian Petzold's Transit (2018) are taken to demonstrate what Jacques Derrida describes as 'hospitality' and 'spectrality'. Based on this analysis, the paper finds both models inadequate to hold together the irreconcilable modalities of the political and the ethical. To address this deficiency, it revisits Levinas' account of 'justice beyond the face' to propose an extension of the ethical view of Europeanness into the spheres of international law and public institutions.