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Article Excerpt
This article explores the different ideas of community circulating in the aftermath of the 7 July 2005 bombings in London. Specifically, it compares the idea of a community in unity with a more cosmopolitan, urban idea of community. While these two ideas seem to present sharply different responses, the article questions the extent to which the cosmopolitan model offers an alternative to the nationalist idea of community. Drawing on various discussions about how ideas of community are produced through different understandings of time and origins, the article argues that in this specific case both the national and the cosmopolitan accounts of community worked according to a very similar logic, and therefore risked reproducing similar problems and exclusions. Consequently, the article suggests that the task of exploring alternative conceptions of community must involve greater sensitivity to the politics of time and other approaches to the politics of origins. This challenge is pursued through the motif of the city as a site expressing a different temporality and thus a different idea of community from that expressed in traditions of national belonging. KEYWORDS: Community, unity, city, time, origins, alternatives
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The political responses to the bombings in London on 7 July 2005, the subsequent "failed" bombings on 21 July, and the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes by antiterrorist officers on 22 July, show us that the idea of a community in unity continues to be the overwhelmingly dominant model available for how we might organize political communities. This is the idea that a community must be formed around the foundational principle of unity, representing a shared essence that goes beyond people's membership in a society or state. (1) It is the image of community that underpins nationalist discourses, the kind that were circulating at full speed in the aftermath of the London bombings. This article explores the idea of a community in unity through the case of political responses to the London bombings. In doing so, it seeks to reveal the tremendous capacity of this idea in steering our ability to conceive of possible alternatives. It also contributes to studies in international political theory that are interested in exploring what might be involved in formulating different ideas of community, and what might be done to avoid the familiar impasses.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair's immediate response, delivered within three hours of the bombings in London, was a characteristic affirmation of a British community in unity. He stated that these events must be understood as attacks on the "British way of life." (2) This narrative worked very successfully in creating a binary logic between the "British people" and "those people [who are trying] to cow us, to frighten us out of doing the things we want to do." (3) People were asked to choose: Either they were with the British people, and the British government representing "our way of life," or they were with the people who acted through terrorism. This consolidation of British identity worked well insofar as it silenced any seriously threatening criticism of the British government in the aftermath of the bombings. Unlike in Madrid, where the bombings on 11 March 2004 led to sharp political divisions and a change in government following the general election three days later, nothing as remotely subversive or disturbing happened to the social order in London and the UK: Calm was quickly restored, leaders of government and the police remained in their positions, and Prime Minister Blair maintained his authority.
An alternative idea of community circulated alongside this declaration of British unity in the aftermath of the London bombings however: This was the idea of London as an urban, multicultural community, organized around the principle of difference rather than unity. This message was most powerfully supported and disseminated by the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, and it was summed up in many high-profile and well-sponsored advertising campaigns that the Mayor's Office and Transport for London ran in the aftermath of the bombings. (4) These included posters and banners displayed across the London Underground, at bus stops, in train stations, and along various streets, declaring the slogan: "Seven Million Londoners, One London"; and then later: "We are Londoners, We are One." This response, led by Mayor Livingstone, sought to celebrate the plurality and diversity of the city, in contrast to British identity and unity. This cosmopolitan ethos was especially seen as a preferable substitute for those who felt critical of Prime Minister Blair and his government's role in the war in Iraq. (5) Yet, it is significant that the multicultural message promoted by these poster campaigns is also firmly underpinned by an insistence on unity: We are Londoners, but we are also One. This raises some questions: To what extent did the idea of London as a multicultural community represent a notably alternative understanding of community to the nationalist narrative? Did the multicultural narrative provide an opportunity to disturb or disrupt the binary between Britishness and terrorism? Or, did the idea of a multicultural community work more in tandem with narratives of British identity, providing a more progressive undertone to them? I here explore two different ideas of community that circulated in the aftermath of the London bombings and ask what effect these had on opening up or closing down our ability to ask critical questions about these events. This discussion will raise broader questions for political and international relations theory, insofar as it will address the possibility of imagining community without reproducing oppression.
I begin by focusing on the dominant idiom we have for understanding community, as principally based around unity. This is the idea that a community is formed around some sense of commonality and that members of the community draw their identity from a thing that they share in common. (6) This thing can be language, culture, traditions, customs, or habits; it can also, in its most pernicious forms, become race, superiority, biology, or an elusive way of life. I examine the different ideas of community deployed in the aftermath of the bombings by looking at the way in which they lay claim to a different understanding of origins. I ask, What are the foundational claims that underpin these ideas of community? How does the focus on a common culture or on multiculturalism work to different effects? In this comparison, I don't assume that the multicultural narrative is necessarily a preferable alternative to a nationalist narrative. Although the former may seem to have to come to supplant the latter, as a more "enlightened" version of it, it is worth remembering that both developed more or less together in the history of ideas. (7) Furthermore, neither is in essence a progressive or a reactionary narrative: Both can work to either effect in different historical, political, and economic contexts. Both can therefore be oppressive. Furthermore, nationalist and cosmopolitanist narratives can work in alliance and in opposition. (8) Consequently, we need to trace the way in which they are invoked in different, shifting contexts, to various political effects.
This focus on the question of origins will inevitably lead to a discussion of how different ideas of community are also framed through particular understandings of space and time. For example, the idea of a community in unity, such as that which we find under nationalism, is formed according to a very particular, linear trajectory of time. The assumption is that we were once united in the past, and that we must work to restore this sense of unity in the future. This principle of unity forms what Zygmunt Bauman has called the foci imaginarii of a modern idea of community. (9) As such, it sets us off in pursuit of an impossible task. The foci imaginarii represents the idea of harmonious unity and order, which forms both the point of origin of the community and the point of perfection that we hope to reach. Acting as both origin and limit, it propels the forward march of time. It is significant that Bauman calls it an "impossible" task, because this sense of perfect stability, through unity, is of course a fantasy. But this fantasy has formed part of a relatively consistent and prevailing response to the experience of life under modern conditions. In a world that seems radically open to change, flux, fortune, and chance, figures from Rousseau to Marx to Weber to Wagner have pined for a time when everything can once again be solid and secure. (10) In line with Bauman's description of this nostalgic yearning as a fantasy, Jean-Luc Nancy has argued that it is important to understand that the community in unity has not "lost" anything: It is simply constituted through the...
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