Waiting for the Barbarians
Gelegenheid: de eerste uitreiking van de Prinses Margrietprijs voor culturele diversiteitQuestion by Gottfried Wagner (Director European Cultural Foundation): Minister Timmermans, we are concerned about what we can do in combating politics of fear and construct hope. And my question to you: What do you consider the role of arts and culture in that process?
First of all, your Royal Highnesses, professor, ladies and gentleman, it’s a great pleasure to be here tonight. I really am so glad that I’m the first of the rest of you to congratulate the laureates with their well deserved awards.
Your question is perhaps at the heart of politics in Europe or perhaps even globally today, because we see an incredible success on the European scene of politics of fear. Nothing works better in politics today than to exploit peoples fear and to say that people have all sorts of reasons to be afraid. You could corner this with a traditional phrase used already in classical poetry: ‘Waiting for the barbarians’. You know, this is a concept that has been used several times in European literature. Coetzee is the last who wrote about this. He said, if you’re constant obsession is with the barbarians, then fear will come. You neglect your own society and your own life and your fellow citizens. And you create a very barbaric society, without the barbarians who probably will never come. And if you do not get rid of that obsession, you will not be able to create the society you want to create.
And I think in modern Western European society there is this combination of politics of fear with a lack of knowledge, a feeling of belonging. Because the problem in diversity today is not people rejecting diversity, but people not finding belonging. What we need in European society today are people to be self-assured, to be sure about the fact that they belong somewhere. Because they fear that something they have is going to be taken away from them. And there, here enters culture. Because I do believe that, to quote Albert Camus, the essential human capacity is to be able to dialogue, is to be able to see the world trough somebody else’s eyes. And nothing, nothing, not any human activity is better suited to help us to see the world through somebody else’s eyes then arts. Because what else is art than reality digested and represented by the artist? And thus, the world presented by somebody else an invitation to other people to look at it. And I think this is where the respect for diversity begins.
If I look at our common European history, there have always been periods where diversity was champion, was heralded, was celebrated. And there have always been times when diversity was seen as dangerous, threatening, as something coming from elsewhere; the Huns or the Turks or whatever. The intrinsic strength of Europe is that we are always able to overcome these fears. Only today I believe that sometimes we have forgotten this incredible strength we Europeans have and here again we need thinkers, historians, writers, filmmakers, dancers, artists to help us to overcome this amnesia for our own European cultural history.
I want to applaud the European Cultural Foundation for its excellent work and assure you that you can count on our continued support. Because I believe we have a mission. We have a mission to convince those Europeans, honest people, decent people, not racist or xenophobic people, but all those Europeans who believe in fear. Who believe that somebody else is coming into their country and taking away their identity and taking away what they have. And this fear can only be addressed if we rekindle the spirit of change and the spirit of diversity. That is essential to the European society and to European culture. And for this we need, not just politicians, because we are certainly not in a position to create this on our own. We need the activities of the cultural world of artists, of writers and of thinkers. And therefore I hope that I can count on all of you to play your special part in society to bring this about. To make sure that this century will be the century where again we not just respect diversity, but where again we take away this monopoly of the exclamation mark in the debate. Because there is a monopoly of people telling other people what they believe. And we should go back to asking other people what they believe, to be interested, to go back to the question mark as part of our debate and not just telling people what they should believe. But to be genuinely interested in what other people believe.
Thank you very much.